


Hold Your Fire

by Pemm



Series: there is a season [3]
Category: Team Fortress 2
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Robots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-05
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-02-24 04:45:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 35
Words: 122,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2568641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pemm/pseuds/Pemm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <b>[BOOK III: FALL]</b>
</p><p>Wildfires must come and run their course, but take care not to scorch the earth too completely. One day you may want it again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. PROLOGUE: DELL WAS MY FRIEND

**Author's Note:**

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>  **Sequel to[Sparkler](http://archiveofourown.org/works/529396/chapters/938003) and [Cryoablation](http://archiveofourown.org/works/990035/chapters/1953792). Part III of There Is A Season.**
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> If you don't read those first you're going to be very confused!

* * *

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

Dell Conagher died on April 12th, 1971.

It was tragic, his neighbors said. Conagher was well-liked at his home in Bee Cave, Texas. Always had a kind word, always had a fix for any problem of a mechanical nature. Bit of a hermit, sure, but no one was without their quirks. All in all, a good man with a good head on his shoulders.

Or he had been, until the matter of the woman, anyway.

“Somethin’ wrong with that one,” James Bay told the pretty investigator with the long, dark hair. “Never saw too much of her, always wondered. Guess I don’t even know her name. Heard she didn’t act right. My girl, my Jesse, once she went over there to talk to Conagher about somethin’ and it was that other one opened the door. Jesse said her face was all scarred over, real bad. Wouldn’t talk to my girl.”

From what the investigator could learn, the pair of them had only just returned from another of his trips, the ones that took them away for weeks on end. Hadn’t even been there two days, hadn’t even picked his dog up from the neighbor who would always watch it for him.

In the dead of night some kind of conflagration had started, and damned if it hadn’t been a hot, dry winter even for Texas. Even the garage clear across the yard had caught fire. When the firemen finally arrived there wasn’t anything else to be done but put the fire out before it spread to the cotton fields around it. No one had seen anyone get out.

When the investigator made inquiries to the coroner, he said it was too charred and melted to truly be sure, but what was left did match a man of Dell’s description. What of the second person in the house, the scarred woman? The coroner did not know. Only one body had been found. The investigator was not allowed to see it.

When the obituary went up and the woman was noted nowhere at all, rumors began to fly. She’d tried to set Silas Roade’s cotton to fire a year or so back, didn’t she? And hadn’t she been covered in old burns? A search was called, but the woman was nowhere to be found.

The funeral came, a few days later. There were fewer people than the investigator had been told to anticipate, mostly family members from out of town. According to one Adelaide Worthing, the truth was that ever since that woman had shown up a few years ago, Dell had been harder and harder to catch in a good temper. By the time the fire happened, everyone had more or less learned to stay away. Even so, it was a decent turnout. No one liked to speak ill of the dead. Words were spoken, tears were shed, the casket was lowered six feet into the ground, and buried, and then everyone went home.

And then, hours later—two or so in the morning—someone came back.

The investigator had pulled her hair back into a tight bun, and the black dress she had donned for the ceremony was replaced by thick jeans and a violet t-shirt dark enough that she was nearly lost in the dark trees when she stepped out of her car. Some twenty minutes later she had crossed the distance between the trees and the cemetery, unlocked the gate with something that certainly wasn’t a key, and now walked slowly up and down the rows of headstones. She stepped lightly and carefully, shining a dim flashlight on each, until she found the one she was looking for.

DELL JACOB CONAGHER, the granite slab read. JULY 7TH, 1928 - APRIL 12TH, 1971. No epitaph. The earth before it lay uneven and soft. The investigator paused there, studying it for a whole fifteen seconds before unslinging the foldable shovel from her shoulder and digging it into the dirt.

Her speed was remarkable, especially for someone her size. It was only four-thirty when she heaved the last pile of dirt up over her shoulder and stopped to lean heavily on her shovel. Her back was killing her, and her hands were sore and threatening blisters through her gloves. She shut her eyes, heaved a noiseless sigh, and nearly jumped clear out of the grave when a voice said, “What are you doing?”

Before the shovel’s handle even hit the dirt, she had whipped out her gun from the holster on her thigh and leveled it at the dark shape now leaning over the edge of the hole. “Whoa, shit,” the shape said in a gravelly-soft voice, putting up its hands. “Miss Pauling, it’s me.”

Miss Pauling did not lower the gun. She did, though, squint up into the darkness, and in the same moment a tiny flame flickered to life in the grip of one of the raised hands. Between it and the moon, there was just enough light for Pauling to see the holder’s face. It was half-twisted by old scars that were made worse by the dim lighting, and had high cheekbones and a flat sort of nose, and eyes that Pauling could only just make out as blue in the glow of the lighter. Five seconds passed, and at last Pauling pointed the gun at the ground. “Pyro?”

The lighter went out with a snap of metal. “Yeah,” said Pyro—the mysterious Builder’s League United Pyro, name and age unknown. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I could ask you the same thing. I thought you were in Arizona getting your house built.”

Pyro twisted to look at something over her shoulder and made a soft, almost kissing sort of sound. A second later another dark shape loped up next to her, this one smaller and with perked, pointed ears. Pyro reached out to it, burying her hand in the dog’s fur. “I was, it’s built now. But Dell asked me to take care of his dog. I would have come sooner, but the guy at the place I was renting hated dogs.” She ruffled its ears, and then peered down at Pauling again. “I saw you at the funeral so I followed you. Why are you digging up my teammate?”

Followed her. And Pauling hadn’t even noticed? Sure, she was running on about three hours of sleep, but that was no excuse. Damn. “Ex-teammate,” Pauling corrected. “And you’re really not authorized to know that.” She grabbed the shovel again and wedged the head under the lid of the coffin. “In fact, if the Administrator finds out you’re even here … how did you find out about the funeral, anyway? We didn’t tell any of the mercs.”

“I couldn’t get his dog and not find out.”

“Were you with him before the fire?”

“What? No. I was in Arizona. We just went over this.”

Pauling studied her silhouette in silence. “Alright,” she said presently. “I didn’t see you at the funeral, though.”

“Yeah, well, everyone was apparently looking for me. I kind of had to make sure no one saw me, I don’t want to get lynched for something I didn’t do.”

“Such as, say, burning his house down?”

For a few seconds, everything was quiet. Pauling could hear dozens of singing crickets. Then: “Yeah.”

Pauling said nothing more, letting the implication hang in the air. The silence soured. “Dell was my friend,” Pyro said at last, in a growling, crackling sort of way.

It took a moment, but Pauling nodded. Then she turned back to the coffin, saying, “Help me with this.” After a moment’s hesitation, Pyro slid down into the grave and did so. Together, they levered the lid up and off the coffin.

A sharp, unpleasant smell burst from the interior as soon as they’d cracked it a few inches, leaving Pyro hacking violently and Pauling covering her nose and mouth with a handkerchief pulled from her pocket. It was an acrid, chemical sort of smell, sour and vile.

As Pyro got her coughing under control, Pauling knelt and, propping the lid up with her shoulder, started fishing around inside. “Seriously, what the hell are you doing?” Pyro said in a raw voice. Her tone suggested she might be considering tackling Pauling if she didn’t get an answer. “Does BLU always dig up its employees when they die or is this some kind of—”

“I really _can’t_ tell you, Pyro,” Miss Pauling said firmly, and in the uncomfortable silence that followed, she let the coffin fall shut.

 

* * *

 

By the time Pyro had helped her re-fill the grave, saying not a word the entire time, the sun had begun to rise, and Pauling was ready to drop. It was fine that the nature of most of her work necessitated that she do nearly everything on her own. She liked it that way, really. But the angry, burning ache in her back and arms and everywhere else made her glad Pyro had come along, suspicious as her appearance was.

When Pyro offered her the use of her motel room for at least a shower and maybe a nap (“Seriously, you look like shit,” Pyro observed) that gladness only increased. Pauling was no stranger to digging graves, but it was rare she had to dig further than two feet down.

“Though technically I’m supposed to be heading back to headquarters,” Pauling sighed as Pyro and her new dog clambered into the passenger seat of her car. “But at this rate I think I’d fall asleep on the road if I did.”

“Can you get us back into town …?”

“Well, you can’t drive, can you?”

“Not as far as I know.”

That settled it, and fortunately Pyro’s motel was just a short jaunt from the graveyard anyway. It was nicer than Pauling had truthfully expected, even though the orange color scheme and stale cigarette smell left something to be desired. Pyro was lighting one as Pauling stepped into the bathroom.

First things first. Pauling turned on the shower, then fished out a small black machine that could have passed for a digital watch out of her pocket. She pressed three of its four buttons in a specific sequence and dropped back against the counter, exhaling. She caught her face in the mirror as she did: bags under her eyes, hair astray, cheeks stained with dirt and sweat. She grimaced. Such was the job.

The watch crackled. “Pauling,” came a sharp, tinny voice.

“Administrator,” Miss Pauling returned. “I’m in Bee Cave.”

“Still. I know. Did you complete the mission?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Good. Any complications?”

“… One, possibly.”

For a few seconds there was silence on the other end of the line. When the Administrator spoke again her tone was as crisp and brisk as ever. “All right. You can give me the details upon your return.”

Thank God. Pauling didn’t think she had it in her to give a coherent report right then and there. “Yes ma’am,” she said again. “I’ve secured a motel room to get some sleep and then I’ll be on my way back.”

“Very well. You’ll need to stop by Roswell before you return, that item on your dossier has turned up there. They’ll be expecting you, so I suggest you bring a bigger gun than usual.”

“Understood. Anything else?”

“Not at the moment. Thank you, Pauling.”

The communicator went dead with a click and a low buzz.

 

* * *

 

The shower may have taken Pauling longer than she strictly had to spare. There was something insidious about what hot water and steam on sore muscles did to one’s perception of time. When she finally stumbled out of the bathroom, clean and wet-haired and still in her filthy clothes as she hadn’t remembered to bring the extras in from the car, a whole fifteen minutes had passed. Not even close to efficient. Sleep wasn’t efficient, either, but even TF Industries and Mann Co. together hadn’t come up with a cure for that yet. Pyro pointed her at the bed as soon as she saw her, and there Pauling collapsed for the next three hours.

The dog—Shep, Pyro had called him—woke her up. He had hauled himself up onto the tiny mattress next to her, stirring her into painful wakefulness, and turned in one tight circle before flopping down mostly on top of her.

Seventy pounds of anything coming down on her while prone wasn’t a good idea. Even with Pyro’s hoarse shouting and the dog’s panicked yelp, it was only Pauling’s own disorientation from being thrown awake that kept her from doing more than slamming the animal back down against the bed with her forearm pressed against its neck.

“—let him go holy shit, Miss Pauling he’s fine, he doesn’t bite—” Pyro was there, suddenly, wide-eyed and bodily shoving Pauling away. Her wits finally gathering themselves, Pauling let her. The dog scrambled off, toward Pyro, body low and ears down. “Christ, he wasn’t going to hurt you!”

For a few seconds Pauling stared mutely at both of them before things snapped into focus. She was going to need to work on how long this took her. “Oh—God, I’m sorry. Is he okay? I’m not around animals much, he startled me.”

“No, really?” Pyro mumbled, carefully keeping the dog’s head still and looking him over. He was still giving Pauling a whale-eyed stare, but seemed fine otherwise. “I think he’s alright. I don’t know. I don’t know anything about dogs,” she added, scratching him behind the ear. “Shit.”

“Sorry,” Pauling said again, drawing some hair behind her ear and looking around for her glasses. Ah, there, on the bedside table. “What time is it?” she said as she put them on, blinking a few times.

“Around ten, I guess.”

“Damn it. I slept too long.” Pauling said, forcing down a yawn and stretching. Pyro paid her no mind as she did, still bent over the dog and with a pensive sort of expression buried under her scars. It was the first time Pauling had taken a good look at her since she had shown up in the cemetery. She was wearing a sort of grungy-looking blue turtleneck with the hems of the sleeves singed, and nondescript jeans with nondescript boots. The boots might have very well been the same she wore on the field. Stray fur from the dog covered her. It was even in her hair, which was shorter and more neatly cropped than it had been when Pauling last spoke to her, just after BLU had lost the Coldfront mission. Honestly, Pauling wasn’t sure she would ever get used to seeing Pyro wearing anything other than her flame-retardant suit—or for that matter, acting her age. She looked up when Pauling cleared her throat. “Thanks for letting me use your bed.”

“Um—no problem. Are you taking off?”

“I’ve got to, I’m afraid. Errands.”

“Errands like digging up more bodies?”

“Burying them, more likely,” Pauling said. Pausing, she tapped her lips with a finger in thought. A bigger gun than usual, the Administrator had said. It certainly couldn’t hurt. Well—probably couldn’t. “Actually, I could use your help.”

Pyro looked at her uncertainly. “Help burying bodies?”

“Oh, no. Well. Maybe. But I don’t anticipate having to do much burying on this one, it’s just a retrieval. You’ve done those, right?”

“Just once, but yeah.”

“Great. I could use the help in case things go south.”

“What about Shep?”

“He can come, too.”

That settled things. In less than an hour they had cleared out, the dog and Pyro’s single suitcase both sitting in the back seat as Pauling pulled onto the highway. They talked idly as the mile markers ticked by. As it turned out Pyro had as many bizarre and interesting things to say as the rest of the mercs, and Pauling found she enjoyed her company. She was a completely different creature from the silent, uncomfortable woman Pauling had driven from Dell Conagher’s homestead with almost three years ago. Pyro liked radio theater and had an obscene number of opinions on different varieties of candy, and with surprising animation told Pauling about the time a turkey had gotten itself on the roof of the rental she had been staying at while her house was under construction.

“It got stuck in the chimney somehow,” Pyro said with a grin, “God, I don’t even know how it got out, but the next day I go into the living room and there’s just this huge tom turkey standing there staring at me.”

“What happened?”

“Well, it was between me and the garage where I was keeping my weapons. All I had in reach was this frying pan, and then it started chasing me…”

A lull in the conversation came, eventually. For a little while the only sound was the hum of the air conditioning and Shep panting in the back. Then, Pyro said, “Hey, uh. Am I in trouble?” Pauling glanced over at her. “For following you. You said if the Administrator found out…”

Pauling regarded her for a few seconds before giving her a smile. “No, I don’t think so,” she said, turning back to the road. “It all worked out in the end. You’ve got no reason to worry, I think.”

None yet, anyway.


	2. ACT 1: SEPTEMBER

“Isaac was my friend!” he cried, he begged them in his fear   
But centuries of hatred have ears that cannot hear   
An eye for an eye was all that filled their minds   
And another eye for another eye, ’til everyone is blind 

— Tommy Sands, “There Were Roses.”


	3. 1: RIGHT, ALICE?

* * *

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

**SEPTEMBER 4TH, 1971**

**"SAWMILL" BASE, COLORADO**

**NEAR MANNWORKS QUICKLIME FACTORY**

 

 

Everyone was gone. Just gone. But the mission wasn’t over yet.

That was the conclusion Pyro kept coming back to. It couldn’t be over, she reasoned. Someone kept killing her.

Just a few seconds ago she had respawned. She wasn’t sure how many times that made, and she still had no idea what—who—had been killing her. She gulped down air to fight off the immediate nausea and leaned against the wall to try and ground herself. She kept dying. Someone had to be here. She needed to find her team.

Pyro slung her flamethrower over her shoulder and headed out into the pouring rain yet again.

This time she made her way carefully around the very borders of the field, moving slowly and jumping at every sound. The rain was getting to her. It was hard enough to hear herself think sometimes as it was, and with the fat drops pounding her mask incessantly it was almost impossible. Still, Pyro kept moving. She would never figure out what was happening if she kept dying, or had another meltdown over a little rain.

By the time she reached the cavern beneath the waterfall, her thoughts had skipped, record-like. The noise from the crashing water didn’t help. Now she was thinking about her team again. Maybe RED had taken everyone but her hostage. Maybe the fighting had simply moved underground, where the intelligence was hidden. There had to be a reason, she told herself, and touched the axe hanging from her belt to assure herself it was still there.

She kept telling herself that as she reached RED’s territory. She found no one there, either. Her head hurt from all the rain, from the waterfall. She only stayed within view of their base for a few seconds before darting out of sight and and making for the flooded intelligence room. No need to tempt fate.

Against all rationality she had hoped to hear the beep of a sentry guarding RED’s intel. That would at least be life. Instead she only got the muted drip of water echoing in the mildewed basement, where there was sign of neither friend nor foe. Pyro stopped and stared for a few seconds at the empty safe that once held the intel, then turned and trudged back up the stairs. She cringed as the rain threw a sheet of rain into her mask when she stepped out of the alcove.

The rain. It always fucking rained at Sawmill. Her headache was getting worse, and the water was blurring up her mask bad enough that it was getting hard to see. The light hit the wet glass in a way that threw rainbows across her vision. She shivered, and turned to head toward the point. She hadn’t been there yet. Maybe she’d missed something obvious.

(She only made it halfway there before she gave in and hauled back on her flamethrower as she walked, ammo be damned. She stared down into the fire, made huge and rich with color by her lenses. Her headache did not improve, and a dizziness came over her, but after she’d used up nearly half her ammo she could feel her heart rate start to come down.)

Up the hill, up the stairs. Her feet dragged with each step. Everything felt fuzzy, and a roaring sound was filling her ears. The waterfall again, maybe. Her boots clomped hollowly on the barn that held the field’s capture point, and she looked up.

_Beep … beep … beep …_

Her heart lurched, then skipped in shock. There at the edge of the point, slouched against the sentry and studying a beer in his gloved right hand, someone stood guard. She could not see his face, but she did not need to. Thank God. Oh, thank God. “Dell!” Pyro called out, dashing for the sentry nest.

A moment later, blood sprayed the floor, thick and hot. It was bright and fresh and new, a lurid crimson that stood out like a flame against the layers of drying, sticky brown that coated the wooden planks beneath it.

 

* * *

 

Sniper lowered the detached rifle scope from his eye, frowning. “Pyro’s doin’ it again.”

“Doin’ what?”

“Ran into the bloody sawblade. Fifth time in a row.” He shook his head. “Just straight into it.”

Beside him, leaning heavy on the guard rail ringing the water tower’s reservoir and rolling his smoldering cigarette between his fingers, Scout snorted. “Gimme that, I wanna see.” Sniper did not bother trying to stop him when Scout snatched the scope out of his hand.

Peering through it, it took him a few seconds to zero in on Sawmill’s central barn, its southern entrance just visible from where they sat. They could see for miles from the water tower, probably over all the land Mann Co.’s Colorado division owned, though most of it was nothing but thick clumps of aspens and pines interspersed with green, rocky cliffs. Here and there it was interrupted by bare patches, where the base’s logging front had once operated. The lip of the tower extended far enough that it protected the catwalk that wrapped around it, mostly, enough that it was a decent place to sit when it rained, and even better when it didn’t, like today. It was Sniper’s favorite off-hours haunt for this reason, and Scout liked to follow because Sniper always let him bum as many cigarettes as he wanted.

Where was the damn base? Oh, there. A tiny, crumpled blue figure lay leaking red some feet from where one of the massive spinning sawblades whirred steadily away. If he squinted Scout could see older, drying blood all around it.

Scout smiled.

Well. It wasn’t really a smile. It nearly looked like one and felt practically identical, but he’d been doing it enough over the last seven months to tell the difference. He wasn’t sure what it was, but it only came out around Pyro, and only when he found her in pieces from an explosion or struggling to stand after minigun fire had shredded her legs. It never reached his eyes.

It was easiest to just call it a smile.

“Nice,” he said, handing the scope back to Sniper. Sniper took it and made no comment. “Looks good on her. Hey, when’s that meetin’ we got with Miss Pauling an’ them anyway?”

“Soon enough,” Sniper said, looking at his watch. “Probably ought to get goin’, I s’pose. Guess I’ll see if I can’t grab Pyro before she offs herself again.”

“Nah, I’ll get her.”

Sniper glanced over at him. He didn’t turn his head and nothing on his face changed—that was Sniper for you, for the most part—but Scout could feel the unspoken question. _What are you going to do?_

But he did not say it. Instead, he said, “You an’ her seem like you’re … managin’, yeah?”

Scout got to his feet and flicked his cigarette over the edge of the tower, watching it fall.

“’Course we are.”

 

* * *

 

Everyone was gone.

Everyone was gone—but. When Pyro stumbled out of respawn, breathing hard and shaking a little, someone was waiting for her. Had it been anyone else—but the sight of the teammate leaning against the divider directly across from the respawn room only threaded her veins with a familiar, sickly combination of dread and irritability. “Scout,” she said flatly, stopping in her tracks.

“Oh hey, y’recognized me this time,” he said. Pyro rolled her eyes. “What the hell you doin’ out here, we ain't done a Sawmill job since February.”

“Where’s everyone else?” she countered, pulling off her mask and strapping it to her upper arm. Scout’s face screwed up as she did, per the norm. Good. “I can’t find anyone. The intel isn’t in the intel room—” Wait. “… You’re the one who’s been fucking killing me, aren’t you? _Again?_ ”

“Holy shit, you are freakin’ useless.” Scout pushed off the divider and closed the distance between them in two strides. For a moment they just stared at each other. Without warning his hand jerked up, snapping his fingers right in her ear, once, twice, three times. It was loud enough to hurt, and while she was jerking away in pain he leaned into her face and spoke much more loudly than things warranted. “Hel- _lo_ in there, reality to moron, yo, can ya hear me over in Pyroland? We don’t do intel jobs no more, remember, we don’t do intel, we don’t do caps, we don’t do payloads.” He shoved her shoulder. “Idiot.”

Pyro’s lip curled in a snarl. The words leapt up her throat, the words to tell him to stop fucking with her already, of course they did intel and payloads—

Something in her brain shifted, quiet and subtle. The snarl faded. The words died. Pyro blinked, and looked away.

“Oh,” she muttered. “Right. Yeah. Now we fight robots.”

 _Robots_. The word was still foreign and absurd on her tongue. Sometimes Miss Pauling used words like “machines” and “automatons” instead, and Pyro could only assume it was because the word “robots” was too ridiculous for her, too. It was still hard to believe, and she’d already nearly died fighting them once.

Yes, she remembered now.

That meant she’d just spent God only knew how long running around an abandoned base, panicking over nothing. The team was never here to begin with. The best part was this wasn’t even the first time. She’d done this once at Steel, too—wandering onto an empty base and getting caught in a loop.

Scout had to have been the one killing her. Fucking bastard. He’d take any excuse. She’d lost track of how many times he’d turned on her, even in the middle of real missions. She was starting to think he’d killed her more times than all of RED ever had combined.

But there was nothing to be done right now. She took a slow, steady breath. “Our last Sawmill job was in April,” she said, turning away and heading down the stairs, toward the exit. “Get your facts straight.”

“Oh yeah that is _real_ rich comin’ from you,” Scout said behind her, following. “ _I_ got my facts straight, _I_ don’t go runnin’ around empty bases lookin’ for people what ain’t there, and _I_ ain’t crazy.”

“You just stalk me and kill me over and over instead.”

“Why would I waste my time?” he sneered. “You kill yourself enough on your own anyway. An’ our last Sawmill job was in _February._ Ask frickin’ anybody.”

Pyro only grunted in answer. “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Scout added, locking his hands behind his head and swaggering up alongside her as she left the base and made for the path that would take her back to Mannworks. At least the rain had begun to peter off as they were talking. That was something. “You can’t remember shit anyway.”

“For fuck’s sake. What do you want?”

“I came to get your stupid ass, duh. We got that meeting with Miss Pauling and RED, official introductions post-merge an’ shit, or didja forget that too?”

She had. “So you got my stupid ass, why don’t you get lost. I can walk by myself.”

Scout’s tone was ugly and scornful. “You sure ‘bout that? ‘Cuz I think you might just go get lost in the woods instead. Find you burnin’ up deer again, havin’ tea parties with hares, right, Alice? You know _Alice in Wonderland_ , yeah?” The rain was picking up again. Fast. “Oh wait I forgot, you can’t even _read_ —”

Her flamethrower hit the ground. Pyro ripped the axe out of her belt and swung at him. There was too much weight behind it, too much anger and frustration. He leapt away easy as breathing, his laugh caustic and pounding, like the rain had been. This was exactly what he was trying to get her to do anyway, probably what he’d been doing all morning. She was an idiot for taking the bait. Bracing herself, she waited for him to retaliate.

The attack never came. He was grinning. He had this grin that never reached his eyes, one with too many teeth and with nothing pleasant in it anywhere. Scout shoved his hands in his pockets and eased a few steps backwards, wearing that grin like the mask it was. “You are way too freakin’ sensitive, Bambi. Screw this, I ain’t babysittin’ the team idiot, I’m out. Seeya.”

He turned on his heel, toward the base—the real base at Mannworks, not the abandoned Sawmill. Pyro watched him spring off across the dry, brittle grass, her hands still wrapped around the axe and the rain still pounding in her ears.


	4. 2: JUST PYRO

* * *

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

Mannworks Quicklime Factory. The last time they’d been here (in _April_ ) Pyro hadn’t paid any attention to the white building with its smokestacks and smog. Or she had, but only enough to realize that it had the symbols she had learned to recognize as “Mann Co.” on its front. The only thing she had known about Mann Co. then was that they supplied BLU, that they were the ones that left the crates at the bases. The lone time Pyro had opened one of those, she had found a giant raven’s skull and a huge hock of ham. She had taken both, but it hadn’t answered any questions about their associate company.

Now Pyro was looking up at those same looming smokestacks as she drew near, still with no idea what she’d been doing in Sawmill. She had absolutely no business there anymore, not with RED and BLU dissolved and reformed under the selfsame Mann Co. When she finally set foot onto the concrete front of Mannworks, she had given it up for lost, and was trying to ignore the sick sense of foreboding in her gut. Scout was right. She couldn’t remember anything, and it seemed to only be getting worse.

Fortunately she did not get long to dwell on it. As she stepped inside and stopped to shake off the rain, a familiar voice split the quiet. “HELLO, PYRO!”

“Hey, guys,” she said, looking over her shoulder to see Soldier marching down the hallway toward her with Spy in tow. Soldier saluted; Spy nodded in answer. “What’s up?”

“We are going to the meeting!” Soldier said, grabbing Spy by the shoulder and giving him a shake as he grinned at Pyro from under his helmet. “It is an important meeting! Miss Pauling is going to be there, you know.”

“I know.”

“Ah-hah, but did you _also_ know that the RED team is going to be there?” Soldier let go of Spy (who brushed off his shoulder with a faint sigh) and made as if to choke the air in front of him. “I am going to throttle _every single one of them_ —”

“No you are not,” Spy said, adjusting his tie. “Unless they prove to actually be robots in disguise. Again.”

“That is what happened last time!”

“Yes, but ideally it will not happen _this_ time.” Spy checked his watch as Pyro slung her flamethrower up over her shoulder. “I witnessed the RED spy harrying our Scout again, so I am reasonably confident we are meeting with the genuine article. I trust you’ll be along shortly, Pyro?”

She nodded, jerking her thumb down the hall where they had come. “I’m gonna put my stuff away first, but yeah.”

“Very good. Will you wear your mask, I wonder? I have yet to see RED’s pyro without theirs.” He smiled a little, raising an eyebrow. “We cannot give up all our secrets.”

Pyro’s eyes fell to her mask, still strapped to her arm. She hadn’t even thought about it. “I don’t know,” she said at last. “Maybe.”

They departed after that, and Pyro picked her way through the unfamiliar halls of the factory until she found the storage room they had all left their weapons in upon arrival last night. She propped her flamethrower in the corner and lay the axe down beside it, and took a minute to try and scrub the rain out of her hair. To her surprise, it had already dried out. Damn rain. At least there had to be a lot more of it to make her panic, these days—the drizzles were a discomfort at worst. Didn’t make places like Sawmill’s pond much better, but it was nice to feel like she was improving.

Running her fingers through her hair one last time, Pyro finally unbuckled the mask from around her arm. The rubber gleamed faintly in the storage room’s poor light, staring up at her with its tinted lenses the same as it ever had. She’d walked back to the base with it off, but if she had remembered any of the REDs could be wandering around upon her return that probably would have changed. None of them, except maybe their spy, had seen her without it yet. She was as much an enigma to them as the RED pyro was to BLU. She was even still in her work suit, which she didn’t remember having changed into.

Regardless, things changed. And Scout always seemed a little less inclined to harass her with the mask off. She left it hanging on her flamethrower’s nozzle, and trotted off to find the meeting.

 

* * *

 

Chatter echoed off the high, empty concert walls of the cafeteria as Pyro pushed open the door. Peering in, she saw the collection of lunch tables clustered together at the far end of the room, nearest where the kitchen once was. Mannworks had a conference room, but it had long been empty of chairs, and anyway half of RED had claimed that as their sleeping quarters upon their arrival.

As she made her way over, she could see the results of the two teams meeting on peaceful ground for the first time. Both sides were more or less still wearing their team colors. Both BLU’s Scout and RED’s were in each other’s faces, talking loud and fast as if to see who was the better loudmouth. The other mercs were peacocking against their mirrors, too, albeit with less squawking and more suspicious glaring. The only exceptions were the still-masked RED pyro, who was seated next to the RED scout and gave off the distinct impression of being terribly entertained, and the RED engineer, who had his feet kicked up onto the table and his hardhat over his eyes.

This was going to be weird.

Pyro slid into the last open seat, next to her Heavy. He gave her a brief nod in greeting and she returned it before glancing around the tables—sure enough, a few of the REDs had broken off to watch her. It was more than a little uncomfortable, and she wasn’t sure what to do.

Fortunately it was then that Miss Pauling, sitting at the very end of the table with an alarmingly large mess of files and folders in front of her, tucked her pen behind her ear and cleared her throat. The whole table fell silent immediately, eyes trained on her.

“All right,” Pauling started, looking around. “This shouldn’t be too long. This meeting is mostly to tell you not to kill each other anymore.” (Both soldiers booed, and loudly. They went ignored.) “You’re all working for Mann Co. now, not RED or BLU, though the Administrator and I will still be involved. We’re not asking anyone to be friends, just that you afford each other the same respect you’d give to your old team.”

Funny joke, Pyro thought, risking a glance at Scout. He was still sneering at his BLU counterpart.

Pauling glanced down at her files again. She shuffled through them a moment, and then paused. “Oh, and the old ‘no names’ policy has been dissolved. So if anyone wants to go by something other than their job title, you’re free to do so now.”

That got the tables going again, murmurs and mutters in full force.

Pyro shifted uncomfortably.

“Well,” came a drawling, scratchy voice. Everything went silent again, all eyes drawn to one corner. “Seein’ as how I’m the only engineer, I’ll just stay that way,” the RED engineer said. He hadn’t even pulled his hardhat up over his eyes. Pyro chewed the inside of her lip.

He wasn’t Dell. She didn’t want to call him that.

A more reassuring voice piped up next. “Me name’s Tavish,” Demoman said. “Tavish DeGroot, out o’ the best damn demolitions clan that ever came outta Scotland.” He looked the RED demoman dead in the eye as he said it, for he too only had one. All he got in answer was a loud, rude noise. The rest of RED broke into chuckles.

“Man! Nah, nah, you got nothin’ on our guy,” the RED scout piped up, adjusting the brim of his hat. “Maybe you could pass out quicker’n him, though, I dunno. I’m Clarence and I’m gonna kick every damn robot ass out there, an’ I’m gonna do it quicker than your scout.” He dragged some of his syllables out differently than Scout, his “R”s more pronounced and the accent nearer the throat than the nose. Still something from out of New England, though Pyro couldn’t have placed where.

“Aw, screw off, loudmouth,” said Scout. “I seen your swing an’ it’s shit, you couldn’t freakin’ break a window with them skinny arms.” Clarence stuck his tongue out at him.

Pyro looked back and forth between them. She had never bothered to try and look closely at any of the REDs’ faces, given her mask and the fact that when they were that close someone was about to die. Next to one another, the scouts were strangely similar—same nose, same cheekbones. All she could really pick out was that Clarence looked just a little bit younger, with longer hair, and he got dimples when he grinned. Glancing around, it dawned on her that the same held true of all the other mercs. The differences were there, but hard to find unless you were looking.

Once this dawned on her, Pyro found she could not stop stealing glances at the RED pyro and engineer. Did the engineer look like Dell? Did the pyro look like her?

Her second question, at least, was answered soon enough. Once Clarence had leaned back into his seat, smirking insufferably, the other pyro reached up and started wrestling with their mask. Pyro did not catch the way several of her own teammates looked her way as the RED pulled the rubber mask off.

The first thing she noticed about the RED pyro was his—her? Pyro couldn’t tell—their smile. It was sincere, almost gentle thing, and went well with their brown eyes. No scars marred their skin, at least none that Pyro could see. They pulled their glove off one hand (coppery skin, just barely freckled, just scarcely lighter than Pyro’s) through their hair (dark, almost auburn, ear-length), dropped the mask into their lap, and waved. “Call me Red,” they said pleasantly. They had the same gravel to their voice that Pyro heard every time she spoke.

Dimly, Pyro wondered if that was anything like what she used to look like.

She was shaken from it when Clarence whapped his teammate lightly on the shoulder. “‘ _Red_ ’? Are you serious? You ain’t serious. I ain’t callin’ you Red.”

“I’m completely serious!” Red said, laughing. "Unless they want to be Blue, and I’ll just be Pyro.”

“Um,” Pyro said, and dammit all now everyone was looking at her. “That’s—that’s okay.”

“See,” Red said, whapping Clarence right back. “Or you can tell us yours anyway, hon, up to you. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t curious.”

Pyro felt like a deer caught in headlights. “I,” she said. “I’d, no, I’m just Pyro. Just Pyro.”

Red studied her for a few seconds. Then they smiled again, and nodded, and turned their attention back to the rest of the team. The ex-BLUs’ gazes lingered on her a moment longer, but then Sniper was introducing himself as Mr. Mundy, and they all looked away again.

Except Scout.

Scout was still looking at her.

Pyro pretended not to notice.

 

* * *

 

All in all about half of the newly-assembled team had given names, though Pyro doubted she would remember to call her teammates by theirs. (Tavish? Mundy? Really?) The initial tensions between everyone seemed to have quieted, mostly. Even the Soldiers (both of whom refused to be called anything but Soldier) had quit subtly trying to break one another’s necks.

The REDs seemed nice enough, Pyro thought, enough that she didn’t feel worried about working with them. It was more than a little jarring when she caught Clarence smiling in her direction, though. Even with the red shirt, he looked too much like Scout for comfort. He even wore something on a chain around his neck, but it disappeared beneath his shirt and she couldn’t tell if it was dog tags or not.

There wasn’t much left to the rest of the meeting after that. Miss Pauling ran over a few more policies that had been relaxed, none of which Pyro had even been aware existed, and told them that their intel indicated their first proper fight with the robots was likely to happen within the next twenty-four hours. Until then, they were free to do as they liked. “So that’s about it,” Miss Pauling finished, collecting her files. “And I’ll be around, there’s some things around here I’ve got to take care of. Just shout if you need me.”

“Yeah?” Scout said, brightening immediately. “Well hey y’know if, if you got any free time—”

“I don’t,” Pauling said briskly. “That’s all, boys, thank you. Dismissed.”

Scout visibly drooped. He bounced back immediately, he always did when Pauling shot him down, but Pyro had seen it and it was hard to not get any satisfaction out of it. It wasn’t a very mature reaction, but neither was his decision to make it his job to make her life hell. She knew why he’d done it, and to a point she even understood it, but that didn’t mean she would take it lying down. She had already given him that once.

Rising with the rest, Pyro stretched good and hard, suppressing a yawn she wasn’t expecting. The Sawmill nonsense must have taken its toll on her. Milling through respawn more than once or twice in an hour always wore her out. In the corner of her eye she kept watching Scout. Smug son of a bitch.

Next to her, Heavy was on his feet, too. “Hey,” Pyro said, dropping her arms to her sides, “when was the last time we were here? Around Sawmill, I mean.”

“Mmm,” Heavy said. “Some months ago. April, I think. It is good to be back again, out of the Badlands.”

April. Pyro smiled. “Yeah, no kidding.”

“Last time you had trouble with the saws, yes?”

The smile faded. “The saws?”

Heavy spun one of his fingers in the air. “Near point, the saws. You ran into them sometimes—always trying to lure RED into them, I think.” The look on her face must have given him pause. “I am not surprised if you do not remember. They killed you at once, cut straight through. Very quick. Respawn does not let you keep that,” he said, tapping his temple. “Thank goodness.”

“No, I think I remember you guys telling me about it now.” Pyro shook herself. Just respawn amnesia. Okay. “I wouldn’t remember, I guess.”

In ones and twos around them, the team began to disperse. Heavy made for the door, and Pyro accompanied him halfway before stopping and turning back to the tables. Scout was coming toward her. When she put herself in front of him. He narrowed his eyes, but stopped. For a few seconds they stared at one another. Then: “The hell do you want, creep?”

By then only Miss Pauling was left in the cafeteria, having spread her files out again to shuffle through them. She didn’t seem to be paying them any attention, but by now Pyro knew better—it was almost impossible to elude Pauling if she had decided to keep an eye on you. It made confronting Scout a bit less dangerous, at least. “I asked Heavy,” Pyro began. “Our last Sawmill job was in April. So I guess so much for you having your facts straight.”

Scout gave her a flat, blank look. “What?”

“What you said earlier.”

“I didn’t say nothin’ about that, when did I say that.”

“Yes you did, we were on the stairs at the Sawmill base—”

“Sawmill?” He squinted at her. “What the hell would either’a us be doin’ over there? We ain’t had a Sawmill job since April, yeah, so what, what’re you talkin’ about?”

Pyro hesitated. “You came and got me for the meeting…”

The utter disdain and contempt on Scout’s face silenced her. “Yeah okay and why the hell would I come get _you_ for anything?”

Why would he? He was right. Why would he, and why would she be at Sawmill? Pyro swallowed, hard. “But…”

“Whatever, you’re makin’ shit up again, you’re hallucinatin’ shit again, it’s all you know how t’do anyway, I don’t care.” No, not again, not again, she hadn’t hallucinated it, she hadn’t—“And another thing,” Scout started, shoving her shoulder with the flat of his hand. “What’s this ‘just Pyro’ shit, you think just ‘cuz you don’t tell no one your name you ain’t the same murderin’ bitch? You ain’t foolin’ nobody, idiot, I know your damn name an’ if you think I’m gonna forget it you can—”

“You _what?_ ”

“Don’t friggin’ interrupt, I said I—” And Scout cut himself off, instantly, his glower morphing into a studious look with deeply furrowed eyebrows. Try as she might, Pyro could not choke down the sudden shock that had leapt up the instant she had processed what Scout had said. “… I said I know your name.”

“The—the hell you do.” He was screwing with her. He was absolutely screwing with her. “No one knows my name. Nobody.”

Not even her.

Scout sneered at her. “Yeah? Well I got news for ya, _firebug_ ,”—Pyro winced at the nickname, she always did no matter how many times Scout pulled it on her—“I hadta listen to _somebody_ comin’ home every night for weeks yakkin’ on about you and now I got that name branded on my friggin’ brain, so you just—”

“Can I interrupt?”

Miss Pauling was there, standing almost between them with her clipboard under her arm. Pyro had not even noticed her arrival. Scout shut up instantly. For an awkward stretch of time, no one said anything. Pauling glanced between them, and said at last, “Scout, I was hoping to speak with you privately?”

Now it was Scout’s turn to look blindsided. And then, with a kind of slow, dawning hope: “Oh—oh yeah?”

“Yes. You don’t mind, Pyro, do you?”

“….N, no. No. Uh, I’ll—I’ll just go.”

“Thanks,” Pauling said with a smile. It was hard to read her smiles. “See you later.”

“Yeah,” Pyro mumbled, shoving her thumbs in her belt and making for the door.


	5. 3: OH SHIT

* * *

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

What time was it?

The question occurred to Pyro only after she had made her way up to the second floor of the factory, into one of the emptied offices where she and some of the other BLUs had dropped their bedrolls upon arrival. She hadn’t seen a clock since they’d arrived, and had no idea how much time had passed between waking up that morning and returning to Mannworks from Sawmill.

She was pretty sure she had really been out to Sawmill, she thought. Scout was the only variable. But she couldn’t remember how she’d _gotten_ to Sawmill. Her memory had her waking up, pulling on her suit more out of habit than necessity, saying good morning to Sniper, and … then Sawmill.

Now she sank down onto her unrolled sleeping bag with a quiet groan, pushing the heels of her hands up against her eyes. She had gone so long without any time-skips, too. The last one had been nearly a month ago. Or she thought, at least. Who knew, really?

She stayed there for was was probably not as long as it felt like, eventually sinking down enough to rest her forehead on her knees. She was still like that when she heard the footsteps in the hall, but they weren’t enough to get her to stir. Neither was the light knock on the door, or the creak of the hinges as it opened. The voice that came after managed to rouse her, though. “Hey, uh, uh—Pyro? BLU Pyro? Yo, you alive?”

The voice was just familiar enough to be startling, and she lifted her head up to see the RED scout leaning on the door handle, watching her with quirked eyebrows. “Uh,” she started, “hey.” What was his name? Shit. She’d already forgotten. “What, uh—what’s up?”

“Aw nothin‘, just where my crap got dumped sucks. It don’t got any windows. But I guess you BLU guys took this room, huh.“ The RED scout chewed his lip, frowning. ”It don’t gotta be big, y’know. Just I don’t wanna get stuck in a closet. You know anywhere that’s still free? An’ don’t smell weird?”

This was surreal. Pyro would have thought the RED team would have been slower on warming up to them, at least. “I’m not sure. I haven’t been up past this floor.”

“You wanna help us look?”

“Us?”

“That’s me,” someone else said, and Red poked their head into the room. “Our team’s a bunch of loud assholes that snore. We’re trying to find somewhere quieter.”

And that was how Pyro found herself in the company of the two REDs, wandering around the upper floors of Mannworks. It was slow going, between her companions lightly bickering about room preferences, and she would have felt more like the odd man out had Red not seemed genuinely interested in talking to her. “We had a bet going,” they confessed early on. “After the merger, on what you’d look like under the mask. You’re different than I’d imagined.”

“Different how?”

“Red thought you’d be a frickin’ Adonis,” the scout said—Clarence, Red had called them once or twice so Pyro hadn’t had to ask, thank goodness. “Just out an’ out gorgeous, I’m talkin’ marble statues here, Greek, all’a that. Fantastizin’! That’s what it was,” he added, smacking Red’s shoulder.

Red rolled their eyes. “Yeah, and _you_ thought she’d—it is ‘she’, right? Yeah?— _you_ thought she’d be a dinosaur.”

“It woulda been cool!”

Pyro snorted. “Sorry to disappoint.”

“Aw, it’s all fine,” Clarence said. He poked his head into another room, made a face, and left it again. “I’m wonderin’, though, did your team know? ‘Cause Py—Red here didn’t take theirs off fer like the first six months neither on account’a them bein’ too good for us.” Huh. _Theirs._ Maybe Clarence couldn’t tell if Red was a man or a woman either.

Red protested, saying they were just shy. Pyro shrugged and said, “I was sort of the same way,” and tapped her left cheek, the bad one all eaten by the scars that clawed up into her hairline and twisted her mouth ever so slightly, and made it just a little harder to blink her left eye. She had spent a lot of time studying herself in the mirror, since Coldfront. She had nearly forgotten what she looked like. The scars were a good excuse, anyway, and they were almost the truth.

“Oh,” Clarence said, “yeah, okay.” Red just nodded.

The three of them climbed another flight, as every door on the third floor was locked or led somewhere inhospitable. Here they came out of the stairwell into a long, broad hall. “Heck, we could just sleep on the floor,” Clarence said.

“No, I want some privacy,” Red said, frowning.

“The whole dang floor’s empty, that’s private!”

“Whatever, what’s in these rooms?” They trotted ahead, and Clarence tailed them. Pyro followed for lack of any better alternative. The first door Red tried opened, swinging creakily in to reveal what was neither an office nor storage. Peering in over the RED mercs’ shoulders, Pyro could make out a familiar sight: chalk-white walls studded with maps and black screens. Complicated-looking consoles lined the room, and in the center a round table stood empty. A few chairs were scattered around it, some upright, some overturned. “Oh,” Red said, “it’s an intel room.”

“Was this a base?” Pyro said, following them a few steps inside. “I thought it was just a factory.”

“Maybe it’s only a meeting room,” Red mused, moving to the single small window that overlooked the factory yard. Clarence made a short lap around the room, peering down at the machines, all of which seemed to be deactivated.

After a few seconds of watching the two of them, she turned and meandered further down the hall. The next two doors only opened into more storage closets, stuffed with crates and cleaning supplies, but the fourth was locked. The handle seemed loose in its socket, though. Pyro jerked it hard to one side and heard something crack, and the door swung open.

When she looked inside, at first Pyro thought it was just another empty meeting room. It had the same consoles and maps and a matching table with chairs, and she had been in so many of these rooms so many times that at first she didn’t register anything unusual about it. For a few seconds she stood in the threshold, just looking around, when something beeped very softly. Her eyes cut to one of the consoles against the far wall, and the gently-flashing red light. That was the difference; this one still had some life to it.

Pyro slipped inside, curious now. This one felt less abandoned than the other had, too, and when her foot hit something soft she figured out why. It was a bedroll, neatly tied up. Someone was sleeping here. They must have had the same idea as the REDs. There was not much else of interest: a small bag of what was probably clothes, a blanket, a pair of shoes, all lined up in an orderly row.

Something white on the table caught her eye. Drawing near, she realized it was a trio of folders, stuffed with paper. Someone from Mannworks must have left them here, before it was evacuated. She glanced them over before scanning the rest of the table. A small box of shotgun ammunition lay next to them; without thinking, she pocketed it.

Idly, she flipped the topmost folder open. A blurry mess of black type stared up at her, by now a familiar sight. Seven months and she had yet to find anything that made it easier to focus on the letters. She huffed, blowing hair out of her eyes, and turned a few more pages. Blur, blur, blur. This was a bad day for reading, apparently, usually she could at least pick a few words out. Today there was nothing, and she was going to get a headache soon if she kept trying to force it.

She was about to close it all again and leave, but the last page she turned to was different from the rest. It had photos. Badly photocopied photos, but photos, and suddenly Pyro was interested again. Squinting, she tried to pick them out in the poor lighting. They all seemed to be of people, mostly from a distance. She couldn’t make out the person’s face. It barely even looked like a face. The eyes were strange; one was a too-big white circle, the other lost in shadow, both above what almost looked like a snout. In one the subject seemed to be carrying something long and bulky-looking, halfway lost except for a fat blob of white against its holder’s stark black top. It looked like it was made up of pipes and tubes, and the one end she could make out in the photograph terminated in a fat nozzle with evenly-spaced holes above a smaller pipe.

… Wait.

The peace of the room was broken as Pyro tore through the rest of the folder, looking for more pictures. There were only a few, but they were enough: one figure, over and over, in a black hooded sweatshirt. Carrying a long-necked machine. Wearing a gas mask with one shattered lens.

A queasy sort of feeling had settled in her stomach, though upon examining it she was not sure why. Pauling herself, right from the start, had told her BLU had been tracking her long before she had any idea they existed. But still, photos? She couldn’t remember ever seeing anyone taking photos of her. And so many, and in different places—in one she was standing by a wrought-iron statue of a pair of dogs and a boy that she could remember fairly clearly as being in somewhere in Idaho, and another showed her near a huge structure she could only identify by the enormous pair of hockey sticks above the entrance. The stadium from Texas, the one she’d burned down.

Was this entire folder on her? And if it was, what was it doing in the top floor of an abandoned factory?

She shuffled through it again, trying and failing to find her own name. Class. Title. Whatever. But even on her best days she could only recognize the word _Pyro_ about half the time, and the folder gave up none of its secrets. With a low mutter, she shoved it aside and opened the second one. It was much the same: page after impenetrable page. This one had only one photograph, and try as she might she could divine nothing from it: a long shot of a squat, dark little building, dotted with crates and machinery. Two figures near the building were discernible, but barely, their details lost in the poor copies.

She reached for the third folder.

Behind her, the door creaked open.

Pyro turned. Her eye fell on the bedroll as she did, and when she looked up to see Miss Pauling in the doorway with her eyebrows in the air, it occurred to her that she really was spectacularly stupid sometimes.

 

* * *

 

“Oh shit,” someone said. Clarence, that was who it was. He and Red were standing just behind Pauling, looking in over her shoulders. He said it in the quiet, half-whispered way that comes with watching someone else completely screw up. Breaking into your manager’s locked room and looking at her probably-top-secret folders sounded like a complete screw-up.

“Miss Pauling,” Pyro said weakly, scrambling for an excuse. _I didn’t know. The handle was broken. I went temporarily insane._ The last one made her wince.

Pauling studied her, saying nothing. Her brow was knit, her face sort of drawn in, more than a little suspicious. She glanced over her shoulder at the other mercenaries. “Red, would you please check her?”

“Honored.” Pyro blinked as Red slipped into the room, but kept still when they grabbed her gloved wrist and held it up. From their ammo pouch Red pulled out a small silver thing, a Zippo, and with a flick of their wrist lit it and held the flame directly beneath Pyro’s palm. The warmth seeped through the glove, growing almost uncomfortable when Red kept it there a full five seconds. But then they dropped her arm and stepped back, pocketing the lighter. “No disguise, she’s real.”

“Thank you,” Pauling said. “If you two would go on back downstairs, then, please?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“A’ight.”

Pauling watched them go down the hall, and Pyro heard the door to the stairwell swing shut a few seconds later. Then she turned back to Pyro. “Well,” Pauling said, sighing, “I don’t think I need to tell you this looks bad.” She stepped inside, closing the door behind her. “Care to explain yourself?”

“I had no idea,” Pyro blurted, putting her hands up. “The lock broke when I tried the handle and I was curious. I was up here with those two, I was just looking around. I didn’t realize. Seriously.”

No response. Pauling was just watching her, quietly. Soon her gaze flicked to the open folders. “Did you read those?”

“No, I—” Don’t lie, _do not lie to Miss Pauling—_ “—I looked at them. But I didn’t read them. I can’t. Uh, read them. Remember?”

“… Can’t,” echoed Pauling, exhaling. “Right. I’d forgotten. Still,” and Pyro got out of her way as she crossed to the table, “not good, Pyro.”

“I know. I know.” She watched as Pauling closed the folders and stacked them neatly atop one another, sliding them out of Pyro’s reach. “Um. I guess I can’t ask why there’s pictures of me in there.”

“I’m a little surprised you recognized yourself, honestly.” Funny joke. She would have known Shark anywhere. “No. But I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt this time,” Pauling said. “If only because I remember the time Scout left that note about you up on the noticeboard for a week and you never figured out what it said.”

Oh, that. Right. Pyro felt her face screw up at little at the memory. That note. The note Soldier had spent a full hour chewing Scout out over when he noticed it. That one. “Okay. Thanks.”

The files secured again, Pauling gestured for her to follow. Pyro let herself be led back into the hall. “I wanted to talk to you about Scout, actually,” Pauling said as she closed the door behind her. It swung open again as soon as she did. “… hmm. I’m going to have to fix that.”

“Sorry,” Pyro said. “Uh. What about Scout?”

“Is he behaving himself?” Miss Pauling asked, leaning against the doorframe and reaching up to adjust her crooked glasses. “You looked like you needed rescuing after the meeting today. I hope you didn’t mind.”

Pyro shrugged. “It’s … fine. Nothing I don’t expect.”

“There’s a lot of things you could expect of Scout, about you. That doesn’t mean he should be getting away with some of them. He’s an adult, and your teammate. You deserve basic respect.”

_You know Alice in Wonderland, yeah? Oh wait, I forgot._

Pyro’s teeth snapped together.

No, no. She wasn’t even sure if he had really said that. He couldn’t have if he hadn’t really been at Sawmill.

God …

“It’s fine,” Pyro repeated. Then, before Pauling could press further: “Did you know about, uh, what happened? Before you hired me?”

Pauling pulled a face. “No, not exactly. We … knew one of Scout’s brothers died in a fire, and that you came out of somewhere in New England before your fires started cropping up, but we never linked the two. There wasn’t a reason to. The first time we noticed _you_ was when you blew up that bookstore in Wyoming. Do you, ah. Do you remember that…?”

Did she remember? Did she hell. “… Oh. Uh. No.” She couldn’t remember anything.

Pauling sort of smiled at her. Pauling smiled at things like that, things that Pyro wasn’t sure people were really supposed to smile about, like Pauling wasn’t always entirely sure what to do with her face either. It made Pyro feel a little better about her own awkward smiles, anyway. “It was a pretty big deal, you could look it up sometime.” No she couldn’t. “Took out half a city block. You stuck around there long enough for us to figure out you did it, but you got out again so quickly it took us weeks to catch up with you again. And it took us a hell of a lot longer to herd you somewhere where we could keep an eye on you. We were as surprised as everyone else when the story came out.”

“I—wait, _herd_ me?”

Pauling’s smile got a little bigger. “You didn’t meet Engineer by chance, you know.” 


	6. 4: ATTAGIRL

* * *

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

In typical BLU fashion, Pauling refused to say more on the matter. Had said too much already, she said, almost sheepishly. Pyro followed her down the stairs anyway, to the second floor, and got a “Keep your nose clean,” and a serious look before Pauling trotted off down the halls.

Ugh. Pyro shook herself, trying to process all of what had just happened. She’d been _herded_ —how? Did that explain the hunted feeling that colored all the memories she still had of that year?

… Had Dell known? Was he in on it, in on getting her to join BLU? He couldn’t have been, could he?

God. She was suddenly so tired. With a huge sigh she turned around and headed in the direction she was pretty sure her room was in.

She’d barely made it halfway there when a voice distracted her. “Hey, she’s still alive! Hey, Blue!”

Pyro turned. There was Clarence, with Red once again in tow. He waved, jogging up. Red took their time. “Oh, man, we figured you was about done for, goin’ into Miss Pauling’s room like that.”

“It was an accident,” Pyro said, trying to disguise the note of irritation in her voice. Probably failing, too, but at least she’d tried. “I’m probably the shittiest excuse for a spy you could ever get, anyway.”

“Isn’t that what a spy would say?” Red said with a grin as they arrived behind Clarence. “Don’t worry about it, sweetheart, we believe you. Anyway we need all we can get against these tin folk. We were hard-pressed enough last time.”

“Hey yeah what happened with that?” Clarence said, glancing between the two of them. “I wasn’t there none, Miss Pauling’d had me off doing some stuff away from the team and they all bailed without me.”

“A BLU’d know the story better than me,” Red said as they looked at Pyro, eyebrows quirking, and it dawned on her that they were waiting for her to tell it.

“Uh,” Pyro started, fumbling. “It was … messy. We’d already got the merger news, so we were expecting to be moved soon. Then we got a phone call saying we were supposed to meet up with you guys in this warehouse a few miles away.”

 

* * *

 

**AUGUST 17TH, 1971  
** **BADLANDS, NEW MEXICO**

 

“Why are we meeting them here?” Pyro said, and no one answered. It probably had something to do with the fact she’d not bothered to open her mask to say it. With Dell gone, she didn’t have a particularly reliable translator anymore, unless you counted Soldier. (Pyro did not count Soldier.)

Well. If she waited long enough, someone would probably ask the same question. Something about this place made her want to keep her mask on entirely: the abandoned Imperial Mining warehouse was hardly the most welcoming place she’d ever been.

Sure enough: “Why’re we meeting that lot in the bloody basement?” Sniper said presently. His hand, Pyro noticed, had not strayed far from the kukri slung in his belt ever since their arrival. They’d been told no weapons, but there had been an unspoken agreement of “hell no” to that. “Seems like a damn good place for an ambush.”

“And what good would that do them?” Spy countered, in that tone of voice that said he was going to prove Sniper wrong. “We have already received official information that this is a legitimate merger. The RED mercenaries have no reason to fight us if they are no longer being paid to do so.”

Sniper grunted. If anything else was to be said it was silenced when Scout pointed out the yellow glow down one branch of the otherwise mostly-dark hallway. This led to a small, dirty-looking room, lined with cement walls and lit only by a single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling.

Pyro felt the hair on the back of her neck go up as they filed inside. The room reminded her of the basement in Upward, or of her own house in Arizona as it was in the middle of being built. The construction team hadn’t been able to finish it right away, and once Pyro had gone down there with a flashlight just to look around. It had all been cement and wooden beams and darkness, and she got so claustrophobic that even after the basement had been finished she couldn’t bring herself to go down there for a month.

This room was like that, the sense of claustrophobia made worse by the crowd of her teammates, and the crowd of strangers on the other side. Nine of them to their eight. They were half-wreathed in shadow, a few sitting stiffly at the low table, the rest standing. None of them moved. As they entered, the seated RED spy came to attention. “Hello,” he said.

“Hello yourself,” Demoman said, and to Pyro he sounded unimpressed. The spy smiled. “This’s a damned joke of a place for introductions. You louts got somethin’ against windows?”

None of the REDs spoke. They were all focused utterly on Demoman now, though. Pyro checked that her axe was at hand. She saw no weapons on their ex-enemies, but that meant very little.

When the RED spy opened his mouth again, Pyro would have sworn there was something wrong with his voice. It was clipped, and there was a weird cadence to each word. This was a shitty time for her to start hallucinating again. “Of course not. So good of you to join us. Won’t you have a seat?”

“I fear we will not,” Spy answered. Almost as one, the REDs shifted their gazes to him. “Where is the esteemed Miss Pauling? I do not imagine our employer would have us meet without some sort of intermediary no matter how neutral the ground.”

“She will be along shortly. Delays.”

“I see,” Spy said. “In that case I do not think you will begrudge us returning aboveground to wait for her arrival.”

If the RED’s face changed, Pyro didn’t see it. Instead her eye had fallen on Sniper—she was trying to place the way he was looking at the RED closest to him, their scout. Sniper was perfectly still, all his attention as pinpointed as one of his rifle beads. She figured it out a split second before everything happened: he looked the way her dog did just before he started chasing a rabbit.

Sniper lunged. There was a hideous crunch as he grabbed the RED scout by the neck and slammed him against the cement wall. The instant he did a loud droning noise like a motor filled the air. His kukri flashed in the dim light and ripped through the scout from sternum to pelvis in a single fluid movement. None of the wet, fleshy sounds Pyro had come to associate with disembowelment resulted. There was only the earsplitting screech of metal on metal, and that ear-grinding engine whine.

The scout flickered. Pyro made the mistake of blinking. When she opened her eyes again the scout was no longer anything even remotely human. Now it was a thing with metal skin and iron joints and long skinny limbs roped with heavy tubes and wires, covered in bolts and seams, and it was staring at Sniper with five burning yellow eyes. It made a hissing, crackling sound, swiping at him, but Sniper threw it to the ground and leapt away.

As one, the remaining REDs lurched forward with a terrible series of clangs, seeming to blur and smear as they moved. Pyro only had time to draw her axe before the one that used to be the RED engineer had her by the collar. With a panicked swing the axe bit deep into the side of its head. The thing’s grip tightened. “ _Guys!_ ”

Heavy shouldered into it hard enough to shake it off of her. Pyro barely managed to pull her axe back out of it before Medic grabbed her arm and hauled her backwards. As he did she could see Soldier grappling with one, screaming, and Scout furiously beating away at another that had him by the arm. He broke his bat over the thing’s head, making it teeter, and kicked it hard enough to send it to the ground. He yelped in surprise when Medic grabbed him, too, pulling all three of them out into the hallway.

“What the hell, lemme go—”

“Medic, shit, what’re you—”

“Shut up, both of you,” Medic barked, and in the same moment Demoman howled something. Immediately the rest of the team piled back out into the hall, Demo slamming the door shut behind him.

For two seconds, nothing. Then: an earsplitting boom. Something slammed into the door, dust exploding upward from beneath it.

Silence.

When her ears stopped ringing, all Pyro could hear was her teammates’ labored breathing. Finally, Sniper spoke. “None of ‘em were breathin’. Was I the only one noticed?”

“No,” Spy said, no trace of superiority in his tone this time. “I noticed. I did not know what it meant, and so I felt discretion should be exercised.”

“It meant they were bloody robots, obviously,” Sniper snapped, “clear as day. I don’t expect the rest of ’em to know a hologram when they see one, not with Engineer gone, but you’ve been to Australia. You’ve got no excuse. I told you this was a trap.”

Spy looked as though he were about to make a rebuttal when Heavy spoke. “Either way, we must not stay here. We return to the van, and report to Miss Pauling and to Administrator. Sniper, you will tell us as we go. Come.” He left no room for argument, turning and going up the hall."

They moved hurriedly, listening as Sniper explained. “Not that I know why there’s any of the damned things here,” he said carefully, “but I’ve seen ones done up like that back home, a lot like that. Holograms over metal bodies. Not near so advanced as those were, actually, the disguise on that scout held up ’til I gutted him.”

“The spy spoke to us,” Heavy said. “The voice was right. Is this also—”

“Wait you’re freakin’ tellin’ us that was real live robots back there?” Scout burst in as they reached the stairs. “Real actual mechanical men, what, like in the movies?”

“I don’t know why I keep bein’ surprised you lot are a hundred years behind Australia,” Sniper said. By now they had reached the top of the stairs, and were making their way down the short hallway that would take them back into the warehouse’s front room. “But yes. I don’t know how they got it to sound like that damn spy, though—”

Sniper was at the head of them when they turned the corner. He was cut off as a bullet whizzed through the brim of his hat, hitting the wall and sending the hat flying, and that was when all hell broke loose.

Later Pyro’s memory of the skirmish would just be a series of panicky blurs. She had no idea how they hadn’t heard them first, because the sheer noise of the thirty or more robots blocking the doors in front of them was deafening. Someone shouted for them to run back downstairs, and someone said no, it was a dead end, and then the robots opened fire. Soldier grabbed her arm and then they were careening forward.

Between her tinted lenses and their speed she only had impressions of what was going on. Heavy had grabbed a robot that ventured too close and ripped it apart, using its leg as a flail to clear their path out of the stairwell. Bullets and a few times what Pyro thought was a laser zinged by them. One caught Medic in the shoulder, and another ripped through the baggy underarm of her own suit.

There was no means of getting to the outside. Everywhere she looked Pyro could only see metal and glowing lights, and it seemed like for every robot they ripped apart two more took its place, swarming in from the side hallways and dropping out of ceiling tiles. Pyro hacked the head off of one with her axe only to have another try and pull it from her hands on the backswing. It got a flare gun to the face, and she kicked its legs out from under it in time to hear Medic shout. “This way! The stairs! Up, up!”

This time she was the one who grabbed Soldier, hauling him off by the collar from where he was screaming directly into a robot’s severed head. The two of them were the last to reach the stairs, tearing up after the rest. As they caught up and slammed the stairwell door behind them, Sniper was talking. “—why would I know how to stop the damn things, killin’ em seems to be doin’ just fine! You want robotics lessons, you should’ve asked Truckie when you had the chance—”

“—didja see that one I was beatin’ on back there, shit, damn! It had knifes for fingers, man, didn’t have nothin’ on me though, and—hey,” Scout said, pausing, “where’s Spy?”

They all stopped, looking around. Spy was indeed gone. “I didn’t see him,” Pyro said, pulling off her mask. Not to Scout, just to the team in general. In turn, Scout acted like he hadn’t heard her. That was how they did things. It was easier that way. “Never mind. So what do we do?”

A pounding on the door silenced everyone. Demoman cursed, Heavy tightened his grip on the robot leg he still held, and Soldier turned smartly on his heel. “ALL RIGHT!” he bellowed. “Heavy, this door opens inward. Barricade it! Guard it with your very life! Do not allow the enemy inside! Scout and Medic, you’re the fastest, go and check all the rooms for anything we can use to tear these jokers new assholes.”

“Or anywhere we can get out,” Demoman added.

Soldier scowled at him, but did not object. “Sniper, Pyro, find the most defensible room in case we need to fall back. Demo, what’ve you got left for ammo?”

“Jus’ enough for the one trap.”

“Very well. Stay here, we’ll set that up around the door as a failsafe.” Soldier pushed his helmet up and glared around at the team. “And if any of you see Spy report straight to me. I’ll hamstring the French coward. MOVE OUT!”

Everyone jumped to action. In a few minutes Pyro and Sniper had found a room with a sort of narrow half-turn by the door, a decent chokepoint, and had started piling up chairs and overturning desks to form a wall. Scout and Medic turned up almost empty-handed. “This was all we found of use,” Medic said, waving two brooms as they stepped into the faux foxhole. “And a fire extinguisher, but I gave that to Demoman. I believe out of all of us he would be able to make the most use of it.”

“Right,” Sniper said grimly. “It’ll have to do, then. We’re not defenseless, anyway, far as I saw near everybody’s got something to bash heads in with at least. Let’s get those desks across the hall in here.”

There were few enough things to be retrieved by then that Pyro found herself standing idle while the other three got to work. Instead she went to go and check on the door, and found a veritable wealth of cement blocks piled atop a metal desk shoved up against it. All around the doorframe Demo’s familiar stickybombs hung in waiting—it occurred to Pyro they might very well take part of the building down. The gravel war bases had a mysterious way of surviving day-in and day-out explosions and gunfire, but in her limited experience, civilian buildings tended to fare less spectacularly. She said as much, pulling off her mask, and Demo nodded, adjusting the fire extinguisher he had tucked under one arm. “Aye, like as not. Wish I’d thought to blow up the stairs as we were goin’ up ’em, that’d get us more time.”

Heavy had opened his mouth to speak when something shook the door hugely, a shock so powerful it sent one of the cement bricks tumbling down to the floor. It missed Pyro’s foot by inches. She looked up from it to find a chunk of the door had blown inwards toward them, splintering wood falling onto the desk. A mechanical hum and a clanking filled the air, coupled with the piercing sound of metal scraping metal as whatever it was that had struck the door slowly withdrew. An instant later it exploded forward again, knocking another chunk of the door in and throwing the desk forward. Pyro caught a glimpse of what she would have sworn was a gigantic hand through the gap.

Demo shouted for them to get clear, and as the other three tore out of the way he followed, backwards, detonator in hand. Just before she turned the corner into the barricaded room, Pyro looked over her shoulder. In the same moment a deafening crash rocked the air. All at once the desk before the door was thrown aside, the cement blocks with it, and two massive hands gripped the doorway. Something huge and round and all silvery metal shouldered its way through the crumbling drywall. In the space past it, she could see more of the other machines.

Then Demo planted his feet, roared a warcry at the thing as it straightened up to its full height—easily twice the size of any of them, even Heavy—and hit the detonator.

The whole floor shook. Pyro’s vision was flooded with light and the sound was so much that she staggered away from it. She regained herself just in time to see the titan struggling to stand amid falling plaster and dust. The blue lights on its chest flickered erratically, More robots were swarming through the path it had opened. Pyro cursed and scrambled into the barricade, Demo hot on her tail. He slammed the door shut behind them, and as soon as they were out of the chokepoint Sniper and Scout pushed yet another desk into the narrow gap between the door and the wall. Just in time: the door burst open six inches mere heartbeats after they did, stopped only by the desk. Metal limbs tried to push their way through, groping and fumbling to no avail. “Not too organized, are they?” Sniper said in a breathless gasp. “All the better.”

“Yeah sure but what d’we do now?” Scout said, watching the growing mass through the gap. “We just sit here ’til we die or what? I mean—”

He was cut off by his own shout as a hail of gunfire came through the gap. Without another word he legged it behind the wall of desks and dropped, silent. Then: “Goddamn, what’re we freakin’ doin’?”

Silence, punctuated only by the scraps and hums and clangs of the machines. Then Pyro said, “Maybe Spy went for help.”

“ _Maybe Spy went for help_ ,” Scout parroted, voice high and derisive. “Yeah right, ran off to save his own stupid neck more like, turncoat damn—”

Soldier cuffed him on the ear. “Spy is dead!” he declared as Scout winced and muttered a stream of curses under his breath. “Or as good as until proven otherwise! We have more important things to consider! Like how to kill every single one of those fatherless metal bastards!”

“Or how to escape,” Medic said, sounding bored. “There are windows that open in here, you know.”

Indeed there were: a trio of sturdy-looking rectangular windows bled the early afternoon light into the room. They were large enough that Pyro though at least she and probably Scout and Sniper could get through with ease, but the others would be a question, and she could not even begin to think of how Heavy could fit his shoulders through. “Is there a fire escape under them?” she asked."

“This is a Mann Co. building, of course there isn’t,” Medic answered. “I was astonished that there was a fire extinguisher.”

Demoman snorted. “Aye, a three-story drop into some bushes, there’s a soft landing! Snap our necks, too! No,” he said, brandishing the selfsame fire extinguisher. “We’re going to have to make a stand.” Soldier cheered. “What’ve we got for offense?”

Weapons were produced: an axe, a flare gun, half a baseball bat, kukri, pistol, and shovel; the fire extinguisher; the two brooms; Heavy’s robot leg-flail. A tense silence overcame them as they looked down at the meager pile, broken only by the constant scrape and clang of the machines at the door. It wouldn’t hold forever. A while, perhaps, but not forever. Sniper pointed at the extinguisher. “Would that do anythin’ against machines? Blind ’em?”

“Might,” Demo said. “Wish Engie were here, he’d know.” Despite herself, Pyro glanced over at Scout, just in time to see him roll his eyes. Typical. “Best shot we have for an escape, though, I think. Give ‘em a damn great eyeful of foam an’ make for the stairs, try to get out. They don’t seem at all coordinated.”

“What if that big one’s still there?” Pyro said. “It was bigger than Heavy, it broke the whole door down.”

Demo shook his head. “We’re goin’ to have to risk it. An’ I think it’s goin’ to have to be you that leads.”

“Wait, why me?”

Demo gestured to the mask, hanging on her arm where she’d strapped it. "You ever been caught in the face with extinguishin’ powder? Outright blinds you, and we’re goin’ to have to get right in among them with it. You an’ that mask got the best chance of breaking through.

Pyro looked down at her mask for a few seconds, then heaved a sigh that might have been just slightly exaggerated. “Alright,” she said, unbuckling it and starting to pull it back onto her head. “I wanted to get a closer look at them anyway. Death by robots is a pretty cool way to go.”

“Attagirl,” Soldier said, beaming.

 

* * *

 

Once she got a look at it, Pyro realized she had another unexpected advantage with the fire extinguisher: it was the exact same brand and model that she kept for emergencies at home. It had taken her a good month of arguing with herself to convince herself to buy it—the thought of putting fires _out_ was something that could actually pitch her straight into a bad mood if she wasn’t careful—but when she awoke in a cold sweat after a particularly vivid nightmare, one filled with smoke and flame and fireworks, she went and bought one the next day.

It had been good timing, too. The week after, Shep went tearing off after a quail, and in the upset knocked over one of the bins Pyro had been burning trash in. The fire had spread across a quarter of her yard before she remembered the extinguisher. In the end she hadn’t even needed to call the fire department.

Perhaps her luck would hold twice.

While they had been talking, the robots had gone curiously silent. When Pyro and Heavy, who had volunteered to accompany her as immediate backup, peered around the corner, the door still hung open. The machines, however, were nowhere in sight. “Obvious trap,” Heavy said, frowning, “but we do not have much choice, eh?”

Pyro shook her head, and checked her grip on the fire extinguisher. There were bright spots on it where the dust had been wiped away. She hoped to God it still worked. If it did, and everything went as planned, they would break through to the stairwell and fight their way down the stairs, at least to the second floor where a jump onto the hard desert dirt would be less deadly.

If everything didn’t go as planned, well, they’d worry about that when they got to it.

Heavy pulled the desk away from the wall, and Pyro took point, forcing herself to move cautiously. It was a damn difficult thing to remember respawn was not a constant fallback. But as they stepped into the hall, there was not a single robot to be found. All Pyro could see was the remains of the doorway that Demo had bombed, and the huge, hulking gray thing lying still in the crumbling threshold.

Before, Pyro had wondered if she imagined its size. She had not. She wasn’t sure how it had possibly fit through the doorway, even breaking it. Each of its arms was easily the size of Heavy’s chest, and its hands so broad and engulfing it could have easily picked up any of them. From the angle it was difficult to be sure, but it did not seem to have any kind of head. Instead she could make out a raised half-circle atop its shoulders, studded with flat black ovals that she supposed functioned as its eyes. Its casing was scorched and dented now, and she could see exposed wiring in its riveted back. “Is it dead?” she said aloud, trusting Heavy to get her meaning.

“This also may be a trap,” he answered, but he began edging forward anyway with the pistol at the ready. Pyro followed, ready to set off the extinguisher should there be an ambush. None came as they drew closer to the fallen machine. It was silent—the grinding engine hum of the others was gone. A few feet away from the robot, Heavy stopped and kicked a piece of exploded plaster at it. It bounced off the casing with a tiny burst of dust, ricocheting away. The robot did not move. “They are not so sturdy as they look, perhaps,” Heavy said, glancing over at Pyro, but he did not lower the gun. “All right. Clear,” he called back to the barricade.

Soldier instantly popped his head out of the doorway, scowling as he (appeared to) peer around the hall. Satisfied, he stepped briskly into the hall, shovel at the ready. The rest of the team followed. Soon enough they had gathered around the fallen robot. Pyro had knelt to look at it better. Robotics wasn’t something she could even begin to guess at, it was something she had always relegated to Australia and sci-fi novels, but she was interested all the same. If Dell had been here—

But Dell was, if circumstances and Miss Pauling were to be believed, dead.

Footsteps. Pyro looked up to see the team moving on, toward the stairwell. “Don’t see nothin‘,“ Scout said as he squinted down into it. ”Can’t hear nothin’ neither. Couple’a dead ones on the stairs. Lights ain’t on no more, Demo blew the damn lights. Think they can see in the dark?”

“Like as not,” Sniper said as Pyro got to her feet. “We goin’ down, then?”

“What else’re we going to do?” Demoman said, and that decided it.

Pyro once again took the lead, extinguisher at hand. An ambush not only seemed likely but obvious, like Heavy had said. Why would the machines withdraw when they had them cornered? If they had another robot like that dead one at the top of the stairs it could have punched through the wall like it had the door.

She couldn’t think of an answer as they descended into the dark. By some miracle, they reached the second floor without incident, but the silence from before had been replaced by that motorized hum. It was distant—on the first floor, it seemed—and Pyro stopped at the door that opened into the second floor to look back questioningly at the team. Soldier was immediately behind her. “In here?”

“Can check for weaponry,” Soldier said. “But keep your guard up.”

Carefully, Pyro shouldered the door open. It was dark, enough that with her mask Pyro was nearly blind. Pausing in the doorway, she reached into her belt pouch and grabbed one of the three Zippo lighters sitting in it. With a snap of her wrist, there was light.

Now, looking around, she could see the silhouettes of strange shapes—not robots, thank God, but they did seem to be machines. They were short and fat, mostly round vats plastered with warning labels. If she tried she could pick out words like STOP and NO, but whatever else they said was lost on her. Everything was perfectly silent besides the distant hum and the breathing of her teammates. Directly ahead, she could see a blinking green light maybe ten yards away.

She moved forward, the team following her and her lighter. No one spoke, listening to their footsteps bounce off the walls. With no other particularly sensible recourse, Pyro headed for the green light.

It turned out to be mounted just above a door, set in a narrowing hallway she had not been able to make out from the stairwell. Passing the lighter to Soldier, she tried the handle. It turned with a soft click. Overhead, a light flickered on. It needn’t have bothered. A large window stood directly opposite the door, just ten feet away.

Nothing else in the room was of interest, now, and it just looked like office supplies anyway. She heard the team’s relieved realizations as they all piled in, and as the head of the pack, she reached the window first. It looked like it opened, and when she tugged on the bottom of it, it did. Thank God, she thought as she looked down.

At least twenty robots, standing rank and file directly below the window, looked back up at her.

She slammed it shut and jerked away from the wall just as gunfire pelted the cement around it. Turning, she ripped off her mask. “They’re outside.”

The whole team fell silent. “How many?” Heavy asked.

“Not a lot, but—I mean, we’d have to go down one at a time. There’s too many for just one of us. And they’ve got guns.”

“And got our location now, then,” Sniper said. “Right, let’s fall back. Look for some other windows—”

He was interrupted by an ear-piercing alarm screaming through the building. Pyro clapped her hands over her ears, eyes screwing up in pain. When she opened them again the team was already tearing out the door. Pulling her mask back on, she followed.

Blindly they stumbled through the dark second floor. The green light flashing above their door had turned red, and Pyro saw more of the same as she tailed the rest around corner after corner, marking each door. It was jarring and disorienting, and Pyro misjudged her position and clipped walls and door frames over and over from it.

Every door they tried was locked, and it wasn’t long before that motorized whine reached their ears again, coupled with clanking footsteps moving in lockstep. They scrambled down another of the labyrinthine halls, and Pyro smacked straight into Demo’s back as he skidded to a halt. Before she could even properly recognize what the dozens of glowing yellow lights in the darkness ahead of them could be, her teammate had turned and bolted, dragging her along by the arm. Bullets flew after them as they retreated. She heard Scout yelp in pain and stumble, and the scuffle and subdued swearing as someone else stopped to help him up. They rounded one more hallway.

A single flashing red light greeted them. Dead end. “Ah, wonderful,” Medic said dryly. “Now we may all die like rats.” No. No, no, no. Looking behind her, Pyro could see the gleam of advancing yellow lights. On instinct she drew her axe. Then she hesitated, looked back at the door, and then lunged forward to grab Heavy’s enormous arm. “Hey!” The giant looked down at her sharply. She held up the axe. “Break down the door!”

Heavy was astonishingly fast when not burdened down with his minigun. The axe had been taken from her before Pyro could so much as blink, and now she was holding the shotgun. She jumped backwards as Heavy braced himself in front of the door. She could not see anything past his bulk, but the sound of splintering wood was loud over the approaching robots. Not ten seconds later light burst through behind them, silhouetting Heavy. He reached in through the hole, found the handle, and threw the door open. “Come on!”

They scrambled inside, the door slamming behind them. It was another office. Soldier and Demoman overturned the only desk inside at once and pushed it in front of the door, covering the hole. Breathing hard, Pyro looked around.

The scene was by now familiar. Barren walls, a few uncomfortable-looking chairs, thin carpet. A noticeboard on the wall covered in things she couldn’t read and probably weren’t important anyway. Her team looked tense and nervous and tired, wound-up. Scout was heavily leaning on Sniper, blood running down his calf. Medic was clutching a growing red spot on his arm, peering out the window. “Well, my friends,“ he said, turning, ”we are surrounded."

“So what—what d’we do?” Scout said.

“Wait for death, I suppose. Unless you have a better idea.”

The motor-hum had risen to a scream. The machines were banging on the door.

“Well,” Demoman said, slow and with gravity, “then let me say—”

He was interrupted by the howl of gunfire outside the door–not right outside it, but further away. Instantly the banging ceased. The BLU team stared among themselves. Was it another trap? No one wanted to open the door.

For nearly five minutes they waited, listening. The gunfire was joined by floor-shaking booms and what Pyro would have sworn to be yelling. Maybe Spy really had gone for help.

Then, with one final crash of something huge and metal, far away, the noise stopped. For a minute, silence. Everyone in the room jumped when there came a knock at the door. “Pyro,” Heavy said quietly, looking from her to the fire extinguisher she’d forgotten she was still holding. Dammit. She nodded, and got it at the ready as Heavy prepared to move the desk.

The knock came again.

“They can disguise themselves, remember,” Sniper called to her, and Heavy dragged the desk aside.

Nothing could be seen through the hole in the door, and Pyro did not dare to look closer. She heard footsteps, but no motors—but then, she hadn’t heard any motors in the basement, either. Grimacing, she pulled it open, and stepped into the dark hallway.

There were shapes awaiting her. Pyro froze in the threshold, staring them down. Blinkered by her mask, she did not notice the one to her immediate left until it cleared its throat. With a flinch and a snarl, she whirled on it, hauling back on the extinguisher’s trigger.

She got an explosive wheeze and a spurt of white powder, and the extinguisher did no more. It had been at close enough range to make her target stagger back and start hacking and coughing, though. She threw the can at it, missed, and was about to shout for them to run when something caught her by the collar. “Wait,” Heavy said. “Look.”

Pyro looked, struggling to see in the darkness. The thing she had sent sputtering was leaned up against the wall, coughing into his sleeve and, Pyro thought, trying to glare at her. “I appreciate— _hhckk_ —your vigilance,” said Spy, “but _I am not a robot._ ”

Oh, thank God. Pyro let herself relax, only to immediately tense up again when she remembered the other shadowy figures. One of them stepped forward.

“Hello, BLU team,” Miss Pauling said. (“Wait, izzat—? Leggo, I can stand, awright,” Pyro could hear Scout start up back in the room.) She stopped, lowering the heavy-looking black pistols she held, and looked them over as one by one they all approached the door. She grinned, a little too much for the situation, maybe. “You guys kind of look like you’re in a tight spot.”

“Jus’ a bit,” Demoman said, edging past Pyro. “Take all those robots out by your lonesome, lass?”

“No, I had help. From your new teammates, actually,” Miss Pauling said, glancing behind her. Sure enough, as her eyes adjusted Pyro could count eight of the dark shapes, familiar silhouettes now that she knew what she was looking at. One was missing—their scout, she thought. The RED team was on high alert, bristling with weapons. “But we can talk about that later. There’s still at least a hundred of those … things swarming in the stairwell and I’d like to get out of here alive, I think—”

An ear splitting crash boomed over her. “And that was the barricade,” Miss Pauling said with a grimace. “Okay! Everyone grab a weapon, RED has the extras. This isn’t really how I had planned your first merged team meeting, but I guess we’ll just have to roll with it. Let’s go.”

 

* * *

 

“And then, I mean, we just fought our way out,” Pyro finished, shrugging. “It was a lot easier with shotguns, and a whole bunch of us.”

“And the building blew up at the end,” Red added. “I’m still not sure how that happened.”

“Man!” Clarence said, punching his fist. “Red told me some but damn, I’m sorry I missed that.”

Red rolled their eyes, nudging Clarence in the gut. “Rein it in, Scout. You’ll have plenty of opportunities soon enough.”

The pair of REDs took their leave of her pretty soon after that, saying they still had a few more places to scope out as sleeping spots. Just as well. Pyro was desperately exhausted.

She made for the room she was sharing with Sniper and Soldier, by some miracle not encountering any of her other teammates before she made it there. She darted in, shut the door behind her, and for a few seconds stood with her head pressed against the frame, trying to clear her mind.

Then: “Hey there, Pyro.”

She managed not to jump. Turning, she found Sniper. He’d unfurled his bedroll in the patch of sunlight that shone dimly in through the room’s lone window, and lay sprawled on it with his back to her. How he’d known it was her, she wasn’t sure—except that the only other person who would’ve come it would have been Soldier, and you could feel the air get a little bit more patriotic every time he walked into the room. “Hey,” she said, slouching back against the door. “What’s up?”

“Mmm, killing time, I figure. Miss Pauling said there oughtn’t be any clankers running ’round ’til tomorrow.”

“Oh,” Pyro said. “Well, good. I’m not really looking forward to it after last time.”

“Eh, they caught us by surprise then. Wasn’t any of us expecting robots. That other Pyro’s flamethrower made damn short work of them, I was surprised. You ought to have an advantage there at least.”

“I guess it fried the circuits or something,” Pyro said, shrugging. She tilted her head to the side a bit, trying to catch a better view over Sniper’s shoulder. He had something in his hands. “What’s that?”

“Hm? This?” He finally rolled over onto his back, glancing at her, and waved it in the air. It looked like a little plastic box, with a single round lens and a slot in the front. “I’ll show ya. Hold still.”

“Why?”

She was answered with a burst of light, harsh and surprising enough that it made her grimace and shield her eyes. When she could see again, Sniper had dropped the box onto his chest and was waving a small white thing back and forth in the air. He gestured her over and she complied, dropping down to sit cross-legged next to him. “S’a camera,” Sniper said, passing the box to her. “Instant camera, me old one from when I was a kid. Not too sure how it got into the bag, but I’d bet me mum snuck it in on my last visit. She’ll do that sometimes.”

A camera. It did look like one upon closer examination, she supposed, even if it did look a hell of a lot more advanced than any other she’d ever seen. But that happened a lot with Sniper. He’d show up with machines that might as well have been magic for all she could have explained how they worked. On the last mission he’d brought a minuscule black rectangle along and called it a phone. That was around the time she’d decided she’d never understand how Australia worked. “Cool,” she said, turning it over in her hands. She glanced up at the white thing Sniper still held. “So then what’s that?”

“Here,” Sniper said, handing it to her. It turned out to be not only a white thing, but a white rectangle with a smaller, dark square inside, and inside the dark square vague, washed-out shapes were slowly forming. “It’s not quite done yet, but that’s the picture I just took of you. Instant camera,” he said again, smirking a little at her raised eyebrows.

Sure enough, as Pyro squinted she could make out what must have been her own silhouette—the golden emblems on her shoulders stood out before anything else, and her hair and skin faded in last. The whole thing had a warm cast to it. It was a hell of an improvement over the photos in her folder, to say the least. “Oh—oh, instant, I get it,” she said.

“Keep that one,” Sniper said. “I got more film in here than I know what to do with. Cripes. It must’ve been me mum stowed it in here.”

“Sure,” she said, still studying it. “I don’t have any photos of myself. Thanks.”

He waved her off, and she retreated to her bedroll, still examining the picture. Mirrors were one thing, and they had lied to her before. She wondered if photos might be different.


	7. 5: OWENS RESIDENCE

* * *

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

**THIRTY MINUTES EARLIER**

 

As a rule, getting told off was something Scout tried to avoid. Usually he was pretty sure he wasn’t in the wrong to start with.

But then again, most of the time he wasn’t getting told off by Miss Pauling. He’d get told off by Miss Pauling all day, really, if he could. She did that really outrageously cute thing with her lips when she was scolding you. And she was doing it now, a little bit, as she and Scout walked down the halls from the cafeteria. “I don’t have to talk to you about Pyro again, doI?”

“’Course not,” Scout said, sticking his hands in his pockets as he carefully matched Miss Pauling’s strides. “She stays outta my way, we don’t got any problems.”

“What were you talking about in the cafeteria?”

“Heck, I dunno. She comes up to me, starts talkin’ at me like she’s tryin’ to do some told-ya-so thing, somethin’ about Sawmill. I dunno.”

“Alright,” Miss Pauling said, after a moment’s deliberation. “Keep it that way. I’ve already got enough of a headache to deal with about merging the teams. I’d rather not have to deal with any more in-fighting than I already have to.”

“Hey, anythin’ for you.”

That got her to glance up at him, scarcely even moving her head to do so. A grin sprang unbidden to Scout’s face, and her mouth quirked, just a little. “Anyway, so,” she said eventually, “I’ve got good news for you. A lot of the old rules—like the name thing—they got dropped when Mr. Hale rehired all of you. I dug around a little and I found out that the one about no phone calls while on base was one of them.”

Phone calls. The words drifted aimlessly through Scout’s head for a few seconds before he completely understood them, but when he did he nearly tripped over his own feet. “Really?” he asked, and heck, he could feel his expression brightening, rising hope shoving leftover irritation at Pyro far into the back of his mind. “So––so I can call home now? Seriously?”

“Yes,” Miss Pauling said, and there was a note of amusement in her voice. “So you can, you know, you can stop petitioning me for the right every other week. I couldn’t have ever swayed that for you anyway. I told you that.”

“Aw, didn’t ever figure you really could. Lots’a times it was just an excuse to talk t’you anyway, ain’t ‘professional’ flirtin’ with the boss otherwise.”

Miss Pauling snorted. “No, it’s not. Um. And you always do it in front of the team. You know I’m going to shoot you down around _them_ every time,” she said, not unkindly. “Not always nicely, either.”

“Hey, I get excited!” he said, nudging her shoulder, teasing. “I didn’t know you was gonna be stickin’ around none, you can’t gotta be on business all the time, right? What’re you doin’ tonight?”

“Oh, now I have more work than ever,” she sighed. “There wasn’t ever a real threat before. These machines are _dangerous_ , Scout, they could destroy … well. They’re dangerous, is all you need to know. We’re lucky they’re only focusing on Mann Co. and not, I don’t know, world domination or—or something.” She shook herself, brushing a strand of hair out from behind her glasses. “But. Anyway. The phone. I would have announced it at the meeting, but I thought I’d let you have the first shot. Since you’ve been asking for about three years, I mean. It’s in here.”

She had taken them to a small office room tucked into the end of a hall, near the factory’s front entrance. The narrow brown door swung open silently as she led him inside a tiny green room, and wonder of wonders, there on the wooden desk sat a little black rotary telephone. It was plugged in and everything. “Aw, geez,” Scout started, picking up the handset a little reverently. “Miss Pauling, I—this, this’s real great. You’re the best.” He couldn’t have wiped the grin off his face if he’d tried, and Miss Pauling looked pleased with herself. “My ma was real worried when I said I didn’t know when I’d be back this time, ain’t never got a mission brief without a, at least a stab at how long it’d be. Sheesh. Thanks. Really.”

“You’re welcome,” she said, smiling back, “It’ll still come out of your paycheck, being long-distance and all. But I didn’t think you’d mind.”

“Heck no I don’t.”

“Right. So, same NDA rules like always. Try not to wear the mouthpiece out.”

“Hey, no promises,” Scout said lightly as she stepped out from the room and shut the door behind her.

Damn. First he’d get to be around Miss Pauling for the foreseeable future, and now he got to call back home whenever he liked. Pyro aside, it was turning out to be a good day.

Less than a minute later he had it ringing. Scout leaned back against the desk, waiting. One, two, three. It never got past five unless the house was empty. On the fourth, there was a click, and then a cleared throat. “Owens residence,” said a hoarse, tinny voice.

“‘Owens residence’, since when are you answerin’ the phone sayin’ ‘ _Owens residence_ ’? Gettin’ all fancy, puttin’ on airs, sheesh?”

A pause. “Who’s this?”

“Oh fer—Roger, it’s _me_ , who else’d be callin’ and givin’ you shit?”

There was another beat, and then a burst of laughter echoed over the line. “Hell, shorty, you done already? Or did they finally fire you? I thought you weren’t allowed to call on account’a your top-secret military crap.”

“Yeah, well, I talked some sense into ’em,” Scout said. “Man, you sound about a million years old on the phone. I figured Sidney’d be the one picking up.”

“Nah, he’s sleeping.”

“Lazy ass.”

“Yeah, you’d be tired too if you did night shifts on the docks, y’little shit,” Roger said, voice warm. “So you really gonna be callin’ us now? You didn’t sneak off to a pay phone or nothing?”

“I told you, talked some sense into ’em. And I got that girl at the office on my side, Miss P, you remember her. She helped me out.”

“A’course I do, given you don’t shut your lousy mouth about her _ever_. If you’re gonna launch into another speech about her I’m hangin’ up right now.”

Scout snorted. “Relax. So how’s things? I guess it’s only been, what, two weeks, but still.”

“Nothin‘, really,“ Roger said. ”Ma’s out shopping. I got the day off, and Sidney’s got work later. Henry’s here, came visitin’, he’s out with Ma. Nothin’ new, you shoulda waited on calling if you wanted new.”

“I’m missin’ Henry? Shoot. I told that bastard I’d beat his ass at darts next time he came by.”

“He’s gonna be here another week or so, I figure. You comin’ back any time soon?”

“No. Nah. Don’t think so,” Scout said, dropping down to sit back against the desk. “So just you four, huh? I thought Thomas and them were coming by soon.”

“J, they’ve been sayin’ that for months.” Scout grimaced; his brother sighed. “I dunno, man. Maybe I’ll give ’em a call later and see if I can’t drag ’em back home next you get back, but they’re busy too.”

“Yeah, yeah, everyone’s real busy,” Scout muttered. “Man, so just you? Wastin’ my money payin’ to talk to Roger. Damn.”

“I’ll kick your ass the second you pull back into Boston. Oh—wait, y’know, there was somethin‘. Freakin’ weird.” On the other end of the line, Roger paused. Hesitated, even. “I mean I don’t know for sure what the deal is since I ain’t seen it, but Ma thinks she’s bein’ followed.”

Silence.

“Followed?”

“Yeah,” Roger said, “official-lookin’ guys, I guess. Suits. She—”

“Whaddya mean _followed_ , who’s followin’ Ma? Do I gotta come back? ’Cuz I’ll come back, I don’t care ’bout my damn contract that much—”

“Cool it, man, shit.” The note of annoyance in Roger’s voice was palpable, and that just raised Scout’s hackles higher. “You’d probably just jump the wrong son of a bitch anyway, you’re so high-strung.”

“I ain’t frickin’—”

“Look, cool it, man. It ain’t like me _and_ Sid _and_ Henry can’t take care of a couple’a jokers if it comes down to it. Ma don’t even seem too worried. I wouldn’t even’ve known except I heard her talkin’ to the neighbor lady about it.”

There was a prickly, dangerous kind of feeling darting across Scout’s skin, standing the hair on the back of his neck and arms straight up. It was familiar and it made him jumpy, and it usually kicked in about five seconds before someone around him got stabbed in the back. “Yeah, well,” Scout said, trying to gather himself together again. “Well you keep a damn sharp eye on her.”

“You don’t gotta tell me that, kid.”

“You ain’t even four years older than me, don’t call me kid.”

“Uh-huh,” Roger said. Scout could practically hear him rolling his eyes. “Everything’ll be fine. Okay? I know you, you’re gonna be freakin’ out now, I shouldn’t’a told you even. Me and Sid can take care of her.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Good. Listen, you call back later, you talk to Ma, alright? She’ll be sorry she missed you. And don’t go quizzing her about this followin’ crap, I shouldn’t’a told you.”

“I won’t, sheesh. And yeah. I’ll call back later. Tell Ma I love her.”

“Sure. Cool. Glad you got a phone now, J. Seeya.”

“Bye.”

Click, went the line. Scout lowered the handset from his ear and looked down at it for longer than he maybe needed to.

The hair on the back of his neck hadn’t gone down at all.

 

* * *

  

Just _once_ he’d like to actually catch the goddamn RED spy by surprise. Just _once_. Once was all he would need! Just one time to give the bastard a nice mouthful of buckshot. Or a bat to the face. Anything, really, there weren’t a lot of things Scout couldn’t do substantial damage with if he tried.

But as it was, by the time he tracked the stupid fancy jackass down—Spy was outside, smoking those imported cigarettes he went through like candy—by the time Scout got someone to tell him where they’d last seen him, the spy was leaning one hand against the wall and staring straight at him. Like he’d been expecting him.

Dickhead.

“Hey,” Scout called as he loped out of the factory doors. “Hey, yo, stupid-lookin’.”

The spy did not so much as raise an eyebrow. Instead he took a slow, careful drag off his cigarette, looked around, and said with exaggerated curiosity, “Who?”

“Shut up, God, look, I don’t give a crap about how clever you think you are,” Scout said, coming to a halt just in front of him. The spy regarded him with a flat, bored expression. It occurred to Scout, abruptly and unpleasantly, that he had no idea what he’d planned to say. “I know you’re still hangin’ around my mother,” he started.

That got a reaction. The spy quirked one eyebrow this time, lazily, and the smallest smile tugged at his face. “Ah, yes. We had a delightful … engagement rather recently. Enchanting woman.”

“I don’t wanna hear it,” Scout snapped. “Look. I hate your friggin’ stupid guts but you make her happy. I don’t know _how,_ but you do, so I keep my damn mouth shut about it—”

“Do you? I hadn’t noticed.”

“—an’ I always figured, fine, whatever, so long as we keep all this gravel wars, shootin’ each other’s faces in, crazy respawn immortality shit on the field where it belongs, fine, she don’t know, she’s better off. But y’know what I just found out, I just got offa the phone with my brother and he’s sayin’ she’s sayin’ there’s some guys followin’ her around now.” He’d been leaning in further and further as he spoke, not entirely aware of it. By the time he’d stopped to take a breath he was up about as close to the spy as he ever cared to get. He could have counted the bastard’s teeth. “So,” he picked up again, “there ain’t no way you don’t know somethin’ about that.”

And the spy, again, seemed completely unaffected. He studied Scout a moment, rolling his cigarette between his fingers, then tilted his head back and sighed. “Unbelievable.”

That wasn’t the answer Scout had been expecting. He pulled away, caught off-guard. “Unbeli—listen, ugly, I ain’t playin’ your ‘ooh I’m so smart’ games, I ain’t—”

“You ‘ain’t’ a lot of things, Jeremiah,” the spy said, sounding bored. Scout’s jaw snapped shut as he stared at him, not expecting to be addressed by his name. But of course the spy knew it, of course he did, hanging around Scout’s mother all the time. Prick. “Among these things is observant. Otherwise, you might have noticed that those same men have been tailing her since February.”

Well. That shut Scout up. It took him a few seconds to catch up with the spy’s meaning, and when he finally did the spy had already turned and begun wandering away. “H—hey,” Scout barked, trotting after. “What the heck does that mean, since _February_ , what d’you know about ’em?—hey, asshole, I’m _talkin’_ to you—”

The spy stopped, stiff-backed. “You are talking _at_ me,” he said. “I realize your ability to be forward-thinking ends with how far you can hit a baseball, but try and be logical. If there were strangers bearing ill will toward your mother, and _I_ knew of them—” Here he rounded on Scout, staring down at him coolly. “—do you _honestly_ believe they would still be breathing?”

Scout had pulled up short when the spy turned to him, biting down hard on the inside of his cheek to keep his snarl in check. “Well—well then frickin’ tell me what’s goin’ on,” he said at last. “She’s my ma, I think I got about as much of a right as anybody to know what’s goin’ on.”

“That may be so,” said the spy. “but: no. Suffice it to say they are nothing you nor the rest of your family need concern yourselves with.”

“What, _no_ , what the hell I am not gonna—”

“Good God, boy, don’t you have anything else to be doing? We are fighting the most dangerous enemy of our lives tomorrow.” The spy made an impatient gesture toward the horizon.

“Whatever,” Scout said, folding his arms over his chest. “They ain’t such tough shit, I ain’t scared of them.”

“Ah, yes, because you and your stunted little team certainly were not ambushed and trapped by them.”

“…Fuck off. I ain’t scared, an’ it don’t even matter, this ain’t about robots.”

In answer the spy gave a long and drawn-out sigh; he tilted his head back and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Incorrect. But then I cannot hope to expect such clarity out of you, can I? Nor fear, you are correct. It is the nature of the scout to know no fear, is it not, regardless of how real the danger might actually be.” He shook out his wrist, and then as a kind of afterthought, reached out and pulled Scout’s hat down over his eyes.

“Hey!”

“That is why you die so often, you see. You have no regard for the long-term consequences of things.”

Scout ripped his hat back up off his head, fuming, but the spy had vanished.

 


	8. 6: FIVE HUN'ERD

* * *

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

Night fell, and passed quietly. Pyro found she kept glancing at the photo Sniper had given her, but wasn’t sure why.

There were no sirens at Mannworks, no alarms that went off at the same time every day and told them when they could start or stop killing each other. But there were speakers. At 4:23 AM, the Administrator’s voice ripped through the building. “ _Mercenaries!_ We are under attack!”

Ever the light sleeper, Pyro leapt awake at the first crackle of the speakers. She sat upright on her bedroll for a few seconds, gulping down air and trying to figure out what was going on—if this was another nightmare—when she noticed Soldier and Sniper doing the same. “Hurry up!” hissed the speakers, and then fell silent.

Soldier, naturally, was on his feet first of any of them, barking orders even as he was clambering into his uniform. Pyro had her suit pulled on over her nightclothes in seconds, and Sniper left his sunglasses and hat behind as they all three rushed out into the hall.

They met Miss Pauling and Heavy—the RED heavy, Pyro corrected herself as she took a closer look at him, a man with a perpetually stern expression and bags under his eyes—on the stairs. “There you are,” Pauling said. She looked as completely put-together as she always did, hair up, dress smooth, glasses on straight—well, slightly crooked, they were usually a little crooked. God only knew Scout went on about how cute that was more times than she cared to count. “Good, come on. We’ve moved all your gear out to the cafeteria.”

“Miss Pauling! Where is the enemy?” Soldier said, marching ahead of both Pyro and Sniper. “I will take them by their circuit boards, and I will—”

“The transport just showed up on our monitors a few minutes ago,” Pauling said briskly, leading them back down the stairs and to the cafeteria. “We’ve got about twenty minutes before it arrives. Here, take these.” She passed the three of them small, curved black things. Pyro couldn’t begin to fathom what they were until Pauling took the one that she hadn’t noticed before off her ear and said, “They’re one-way headsets. We’re switching over from speakers since not everywhere we’ll be headed has them. Go ahead and put them on now.”

When they arrived at the cafeteria it was surprisingly silent for having so many people checking weapons and readying up. Most of them were still blinking sleep out of their eyes, but when Pyro’s gaze landed on Red she found them waving her over. They were already standing by her gear anyway. “Good morning, missy,” they said as she came up, adjusting the straps on their shoulders. “Ready to fight some robots?”

“I’d rather go back to bed,” Pyro said, grabbing her shotgun and giving it the once-over. “I’d rather do just about anything else after the last time we fought them, I guess.”

“I hear you,” Red said with a soft laugh. “That wasn’t fun. But a job’s a job, I guess. I wouldn’t know where else to go if I lost this one. And at least we have respawn this time, yeah?”

Before Pyro could answer, the little headset newly set against her ear spoke. She jumped, and out of the corner of her eye saw Red do the same. “Your attention, gentlemen.” The room instantly went quiet at the sound of the Administrator’s voice. “Thank you. The transport’s approach has been determined. They will be upon us in approximately ten minutes, near the rear entrance. The transport is roughly the size of a two-story building; I trust you won’t need help finding it.” The Administrator paused. “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you after your previous engagement with them that this is a very dangerous enemy. Their intent at this time is the takeover, or if takeover is impossible, the total destruction, of all Mann Co. facilities. As you have seen, they are more than capable of the explosive force necessary to topple a building.”

“T’was a thin of beauty,” the RED demoman said reverently. Demoman, or Tavish or whoever he was, rolled his eye. The RED demo scowled. “Oh, don’t give me none o’that.”

“It was artless. Sloppy!” Demoman hissed, but then the Administrator had begun to speak again.

"Hale has already told you this, but I will reiterate: the robots of Gray Gravel Co. are relentless and do not know fear. They are stronger than you. They will stop at nothing. There were an estimated two hundred at the warehouse where the BLU team encountered them. Today there are, approximately, five hundred in the approaching transport, some of which you have not yet engaged in combat.

“Five hun’erd?!” one of the scouts said—Pyro couldn’t tell which, but Red looked over at Clarence with something that was between a frown and a worried look. Pyro found she didn’t much care about which scout had said it. She was more concerned with what the Administrator had told them—five hundred robots? Seventeen mercenaries were expected to fight off _five hundred_ weaponized robots?

She wished Dell was there. It was a sharp, unpleasant-feeling wish, one that didn’t do anything to soothe the sudden apprehension welling up in her gut. Her eyes fell on the RED engineer, who was picking through his wrenches quietly.

But the Administrator made no further comment on that. “Good luck, mercenaries,” she said. “You’ll need it.”

As the speakers died, as if on cue, the small sound of someone clearing their throat could be heard. Every eye in the cafeteria automatically fell on Miss Pauling. She smiled. “Alright, guys,” she said in a clear, calm voice, “I’ll give you the plans on the way out. Let’s go.”

 

* * *

 

Fog choked the air like smoke. It coated Pyro’s lenses, and for the third time since they’d walked out of the Mannworks building, she tried to wick the moisture away with her glove. It only smeared. She grumbled, shifting her grip on her flamethrower.

Even without her mask getting in the way, it would have been difficult to see. Floodlights were mounted at points in the factory yard, misty and faraway-looking and doing more casting of eerie shadows than actually illuminating anything. Above, the faintest glimmer of stars could be seen. The most obvious thing, though, was the enormous dark shape that had crested one of the flatter hills near the factory, and the huge, glowing yellow windows set in it. The robot transport was easily twice the size of even the largest of the barns that sat in the Mannworks yard, and this close it made a deep, ceaseless rumbling sound that carried through the ground. Pyro could feel it through her boots.

From her position behind a cluster of rocks, far to the left of the field, Pyro tried to get her bearings. It was a small field, compared to the bases, made smaller by the fact they had been strictly instructed not to go outside the fence under any circumstances. The reason for this hadn’t been mentioned. Near the front, the Engineer had built a sentry nest. It was red and still made her instinctively want to backpedal, even though it had been retuned to only fire on non-organic things. One of the heavies—from here she couldn’t tell which—was positioned by his dispenser. The other was standing just-visible on the further end of the field, with BLU’s Medic. A few yards from them she could see Red and Scout, nearest where the enemy would approach from. By the same token, Pyro’s rocks were just next to the barred-up entrance, in a blind spot, and she had orders to flank, distract, and harry as much as possible. Those same orders had also been given to the nervous bundle of energy next to her.

“Man alright but like, y’know, I ain’t complainin‘—I mean, I’m complainin’ a little, I guess. Just, why’d Miss P go an’ split us up?” Clarence blew on his hands, shivering. “I mean I don’t got nothin’ against you, Blue. But it’s just, I been with—I known Red a long time, like—”

Pyro had popped her mask filter. “Are you really calling me Blue?”

“What? Oh. Well I mean it’s just weird callin’ you Pyro. Like I said I been, I known Red a long time by now and as far as I’m concerned Pyro’s _their_ name, y’know? I don’t get why we ain’t split up colorwise. I know how they fight an’ all, Red I mean. We’re real good together. I figure you an’ your scout’re probably gonna be better together than you and me, yeah? You know each other?”

“We don’t exactly get along,” Pyro muttered. “I’d have been more surprised if Pauling had put us together.”

“Really? Why?” Clarence said, but it was lost under the scream of a distant alarm. Pyro snapped her mask shut again, grateful for the interruption.

Her headset crackled. “The first wave is en route,” the Administrator said, but Pyro scarcely heard her. She was watching the transport, and the huge panel at its front beginning to yawn open. Golden light poured from it, glimmering under the fog, and then she could see the robots.

The robots. They stood rank-and-file, the incessant motor-roar audible even as far out as they were. If she looked hard Pyro could recognize the wire-armed ones and more than a handful of the towering giants, but there were others even beyond them: round, armored ones, massive white ones. How many different kinds were there?

The motor hum grew louder, and she thought she could feel it in her teeth, now. Only their second engagement with the machines and the sound already made her cold with apprehension.

The transport finished opening. The robots began to march. Dozens and dozens of them, endless, Pyro had no idea how even such a large vehicle could fit so many. She could see exhaust billowing up over them in great gray clouds, dirty smoke, nothing like fire. She waited.

The first lines disappeared into the trees between them and the yard, more pouring after like ants. Not two minutes later the thunder of footsteps and the crack of splintering wood heralded their arrival as they pressed against the flimsy barricade. Pyro checked her weapons again. Next to her she could hear Clarence shifting from one foot to the next, muttering to himself, talking himself up.

The hum was in her brain.

A war cry that could only be Soldier interrupted it as the barricades fell apart. The familiar howl of gunfire ripped through the fog, and the fight was on.

Clarence was off like a shot. Pyro tore after, nearly slipping in the wet grass. Ahead of her, Clarence darted across the machines’ path and planted himself right in the middle of things, firing shot after explosive shot of scattergun rounds into their lines. Opposite him, Pyro braced herself against the rocks and hauled back on the trigger of her flamethrower as the first machine came within range.

Fire blossomed out into the foggy air, alive in the dark. It leapt and licked at the machines striding through it, and at first Pyro thought it wasn’t doing anything. But smoke started curling up from the gray bodies as she kept the stream steady, dodging the swings and grabs best she could, and then something exploded inside one of them. It fell to the ground, one of the wiry disguise-capable ones, only to be trampled by its comrades. The second one fell before her just as quickly, but then the numbers became overwhelming, and three of them focused on her. At first she tried to hold her ground, grabbing for her shotgun; one round blew a hole in one of them to no apparent effect, and then something caught her in the side. The familiar agony of her skin tearing open and air flowing into the pierced suit hit her. Pyro stumbled back, sending them flying with a fierce blast of air from the flamethrower’s oxygen reserves, and scrambled to a safer position.

She found herself at the Engineer’s dispenser, where the BLU Heavy stood with braced feet and minigun roaring. Next to him the sentry operated like the clockwork it was, disrupting line after line of the machines with bullets and rockets. Pyro dropped by the dispenser. God, she hadn’t used a dispenser in months, had she? She twisted the oxygen valve on its side and fumbled to refuel as it began to heal her. A moment later Clarence skated in after her, bleeding from the arm. He threw himself down next to her, breathing hard, and elbowed her. “Damn, bastards go down quick, huh?”

“What? Uh, yeah.”

“They just keep comin’ though,” the Engineer added, adjusting something on his sentry. Pyro glanced up at him as she finished topping off her weapon. God the resemblance to Dell—at least with the gear on—was uncanny. “An’ these are just the rank-an’-files, near as I can tell. Cannon fodder.”

“Are you kiddin‘, what else they got? Blue here told me an’ Pyro some about, what was it, them real big ones—”

“What, like that one?” the Engineer said, pointing his wrench ahead. Clarence scrambled to his knees to peer over the dispenser. Pyro followed, and as she did she heard Clarence cuss.

A titan like the one from the warehouse had emerged from the gate, and Pyro felt her stomach drop. It seemed even larger than she remembered, standing far more than just head and shoulders above the rest. Through the fog she could see the circle of eyes atop its shoulders, gleaming blue. The smaller ones swarmed around it like ants, all of them bearing down on the nest.

Pyro grabbed her flamethrower, but she needn’t have. Half a second later the dirt beneath the robots exploded. Tin bodies went flying up yards into the air, coming back down with a screeching crash. Somewhere in the dog she heard the triumphant howls of Soldier and Demoman, in harmony with the same from RED. The titan did not fly so much as merely fall, crushing some of the smaller ones beneath it.

As Pyro watched it try to rise, something grabbed her shoulder. She jumped, spinning to see Engineer. He barely spared her a glance. “What’re you waitin’ for? Jesus?” he said, shoving her toward the fallen robots. “Go get ’em, git!”

“Christ, I’m going, don’t push me!”

The machine slipped in the grass as she bore down on it, a stroke of luck if she ever had one. With Heavy and the sentry picking off the smaller ones that were still moving, Pyro managed to get around behind the thing. In the corner of her vision she could see Clarence bounding after her, whooping. Breathing hard, Pyro planted herself behind the titan, pointed the muzzle of her flamethrower at a hole blown in its chassis, and let the scream of the flames drown out the ceaseless motor sound.

The titan was slow to react. It could afford it; none of the bullets Heavy and the Engineer were sending its way seemed to be able to pierce its metal skin. Pyro tried to circle it as it twisted, looking for her as its body began to go red with heat.

So much for her luck. Of course her foot hit one of the fallen robots as she moved, of course it did. She fell square on her ass, the fire going out as she lost her grip.

When she looked up again, the machine had turned toward her and stood looking at her. One of those massive hands began to reach down.

With a panicky, choked sort of sound Pyro shoved herself backwards as hard as she could. She did nothing but slip, her boots digging furrows in the exploded dirt. Fuck. Oh, fuck, she’d died in hundreds of terrible gruesome ways before but never by being torn limb from limb by a monstrous robot, fuck—

A huge hole appeared in the middle of the robot’s chest with a boom. Pyro jerked backwards again, but the titan paused, as if recalculating. The lights of its many eyes blinked independent of one another, eerie, and then it straighted up and turned. The motor screech was louder now with the hole. Pyro stared up at it stupidly, wondering what had penetrated its armor. The robot seemed to be wondering the same. It looked around, or seemed to, and another hole blew its head open.

All the lights on it went off at once. Its arms dropped instantly, and without any sort of grace whatsoever it toppled. Pyro’s sense of self-preservation came back to her just as it began to fall, and she threw herself sideways barely in time to avoid being crushed. Panting hard, she tried to figure out where the shot had come from—there, on the far end of the field. A tiny figure threw up its arm and waved once before swinging its rifle back up onto its shoulder. Pyro exhaled hard. “Thanks, Sniper,” she muttered to herself, finally getting back to her feet.

As she picked up her flamethrower, a red blur nearly slammed into her as it skidded to a halt at her side. Clarence, panting and grinning fiercely, shoving more ammo into his scattergun, punched her arm. “Man, I thought you was gonna get your head popped off!” Great, yeah. “I just killed like seventeen’a these little suckers, they ain’t so tough. C’mon c’mon I think we about got this first wave of ’em nailed let’s go!”

He grabbed her wrist and tugged her toward the crowd of robots their opposite-colored counterparts were still gunning down. She was getting pulled around a lot, today, but as she raced after him she could not deny the sense of exhilaration that was rising above her fear.

 

* * *

 

The last standing robot dropped with a sticky bomb to its face, and Pyro yelled in victory with the rest of her team. She was bleeding in three places and she thought her left hand was broken, but it was nothing one of the medics couldn’t fix. The fight had taken less than half an hour. Maybe this wasn’t going to be as hard as it sounded.

“Good,” said the Administrator in her ear, in a voice that suggested it was almost anything other than good. “That was the first wave. Our intelligence suggests there will be five more.”

Next to her she heard Red cuss clear through their mask.

Ten minutes later they had regrouped, and the rising scream of the motors was filling Pyro’s head again. She was sore and exhausted, but she’d already started learning what and what not to do—don’t get in grabbing range of the titans. Don’t focus fire on the wire-armed ones, it’ll draw their attention—the reconnaissance team, she had heard Miss Pauling call them. Christ, if those were just recon, how bad were the others she had seen in the transport going to be?

The second wave fell upon them all too quickly, and Pyro and Clarence scrambled back into action. Things went more smoothly now that they were starting to pick up the rhythm, and Pyro could feel her confidence rising up. It was dangerous and strange and she was sure she’d be hearing that motor noise in her sleep, but she hadn’t even died yet. Now she let loose one last eruption of flame on the latest ranks, watched them drop one by one to sentry fire and sniper bullets, and turned back to face the gate.

Something large and white had appeared. Pyro blinked at it, pausing. It was smooth-looking, smoother than the other robots, which all looked largely recycled and were universally dented. A strip of black glass cut horizontally across its elongated face, and a thick cylinder sat on its back. It was nothing like the size of the titans, but still stood above the recon machines. Uncertain, she backpedaled. She needed more ammo anyway.

Back at the sentry nest, the Engineer was leaning on the fence he had halfway mounted the sentry behind, fussing with his shotgun. It was a big, clunky-looking number, different from the standard-issue model Pyro and the others carried. Custom build, maybe. Pyro hooked up her flamethrower to the dispenser and rummaged around in its drawer for bullets.

Another flurry of rockets pelted the ground where she had been standing not a minute ago, and metal was thrown into the air like shrapnel amid bursting dirt and turf Pyro dropped down behind the fence and covered her head as some of it hailed onto the nest. When it had all fallen again, she looked back out at the field. For how many robots were still closing in they may as well have not killed any at all. “How do they have so many?” she muttered to the Engineer, who only grunted. Whether he understood her at all was up for debate.

Whatever. Pyro squared her shoulders, pulled out her shotgun, and started firing into the few still-intact machines that had landed in range. One down, two. Things were still going alright.

And then the white robot stepped back into view. It was still too far out for Pyro or the sentry to touch. It stopped for a moment as more recons rushed past it, its narrow head turning left and right as if it were analyzing the field. It stopped with its black visor pointed across the map, where both scouts, Soldier, and the RED demoman were clustered just a dozen or so yards away.

It lifted its right arm, white with a black underbelly of reinforced pipes and tubing and terminating in a fat, narrow nozzle. A sniper bullet clipped its shell, barely cracking it. Pyro saw something flicker to life under the nozzle, something bright and familiar that made her stare. She realized what the robot was for in an instant.

She ripped her flamethrower off the dispenser and bolted, biting back the urge to scream at her teammates to run. It wouldn’t do any good, they couldn’t hear her. And anyway, by the time she’d started toward them, the machine had already taken aim and fired. A blazing arc of something went shooting through the air. Pyro was still fifty feet from them when it made impact, splattering everywhere.

Shattering, ear-splitting shrieks filled her ears. The flames exploded, consuming her teammates. One of the scouts dropped instantly and the others followed soon enough, writhing and pawing at their faces and oh Christ she was glad for the smoke and the tint of her lenses because the way their skin was melting right in front of her eyes—

Pyro stared at the dancing flames in horror for a long few seconds before she turned back to the robots. Red nearly slammed into her—she had to grab them by the arms to keep them from shoving past. “ _Lhet gho_!” she heard them screech, muffled. “Whtrre yhou _dhoinng_ —”

They snarled and clawed at her, but one way or another Pyro managed to drag them behind the cover of a rock. Keeping hold of them, she ripped her masked off. “It’s napalm,” she told them, yelling to be heard over the screams. “Red, _listen_ , it’s napalm, we can’t do anything for them!” Red only gaped. “We’d need a blanket or dry powder to put them out and we don’t have either of those, do you understand? Compressed air would just make it worse!”

This seemed to get through. Red stared at her, and then at where the thing that was once Clarence still lay screaming. They seemed to deflate, and nodded slowly.

Another burst of flaming jellied gasoline hit the ground right next to the two of them, forming a foot-high wall of flame between them and their team. They jumped and tore back to cover.

At the sentry nest they found themselves at, the Engineer was cussing frantically under his breath, doing something with the sentry. The RED medic was leaned against the dispenser, and did not look up as the two of them arrived. Pyro shook herself. “We have to kill the white one.”

“What in tarnation does it look like I’m doin‘?“ the Engineer snapped, shoving something protruding out of the sentry back inside it. ”Hell an’ god _damn_ , you think I want to get lit up like those did? _Shit_. This thing’s jammed. Keep the damn tin cans off me, I can fix it—”

A sharp bark of a voice. The RED medic, still slumped against the dispenser but staring just past the Engineer. “ _Ten’o’clock!_ ”

Pyro and the other two looked left, immediately, much too slow. All Pyro saw was a lumbering dark thing just feet from the Engineer, short and bristling with what seemed like random, haphazard spikes and scrap metal.

There was no warning, no beeping or shaking. All the alert they got was a few lights flickering on the thing’s center before it exploded.

Pyro would not have thought to dive if Red had not grabbed her by the arm and yanked her down to the ground, behind the dispenser with the medic. Shrapnel hailed down and Pyro yowled as something thumped into her back; next to her she heard Red grunt and the medic curse. When the last of it seemed to have fallen, she peered out from under her arms. On the edge of her vision she could make out one of the sentry’s barrels, riddled with tears and flung away, and near it lay the Engineer. She couldn’t tell if he was dead, but one of his legs had been blown off.

She scrabbled to her feet, shrapnel spilling off of her. Once she was sure the coast was clear she darted over to him. He was lying on his side, sort of propped up in an unnatural way. With one foot, she rolled him onto his back.

Dead, she decided. An iron bar had pierced his ribcage, around his heart, and part of his face was missing. For a few seconds she looked at it, trying to figure out why it made her feel particularly sick, but before she could decided she unholstered her shotgun and blew the other part of his face away. They didn’t have time. They needed him back as soon as possible.

Before she could even lower the gun something grabbed her arm. “C’mmn,” Red said, hauling her a step sideways, and that was all. Pyro ran after them and the medic, back toward their surviving teammates.

When they finally skidded into where the others had made a stand, most of the robots had thinned out. The white one still stood, though now its casing was riddled with cracks and holes. Jesus, they had no way of fixing things if it doused the rest of them, they’d all burn up. Pyro wasn’t even sure if her suit would stand up to napalm.

Shit, she hadn’t even put her mask back on. She checked that she still had it under her arm, and keeping one eye on the white machine, took stock of her allies: about half of the RED team, and just her Sniper and Heavy. There were a lot of burning bodies on the field. She stole one more glance at the white robot and then dashed over to Sniper. He was perched next to one of the buildings, kneeling sort of between it and a boulder, and Pyro had to scale a small wet cliff to get to him. “Hey,” she said breathlessly, though he did not so much as look her way when she did so. “Sniper—”

“Ain’t got time, miss,” Sniper said through grit teeth, and half a second later the crack of his rifle split the air around them. Pyro winced at the boom. “Kinda busy—”

“Can you take out its arm?” Ignoring his protest, she dropped to her knees beside him, pointing at the tiny blue flame burning at the tip of the robot’s nozzle. “I think that’s its only ignition method,” she said. “If you can shoot that off I dont’ think it can light the napalm anymore.”

Sniper squinted, following her gesture. “That’s a hell of a small target.”

“Yeah, and since when has that ever stopped you?”

Sniper exhaled, shrugged. But a few seconds later he was lining up another shot, just as the machine extended its arm toward them again.

One second there was a flare under the nozzle. In the next it had blinked out, something dark flying away from the robot, accompanied by another ear-splitting boom. Pyro did not wince this time, but when another came and the robot’s arm jerked sharply sideways, she flinched—and harder, when instantly after the machine’s arm ruptured. The ceramic casing flew apart, the arm becoming a gorgeous fireball. The robot wheeled backwards, crashing into its own allies and knocking them to the ground. It toppled, and seconds later a barrage of rockets and minigun fire had shattered its unprotected underside. Pyro breathed a sigh of relief, taking in the fire, and returned Sniper’s triumphant grin before pulling her mask back over her head.

The Engineer returned soon after, along with the other dead, and the fight raged on. Twice Pyro woke up in respawn, but all in all there were fewer scares after that. They were quick learners, all of them, and by the time the Administrator’s voice crackled through their headsets to announce the arrival of the final wave the high spirits could be felt everywhere. It was hard work, and they were tired, but they were winning.

Sixth wave. Pyro counted five titans, three ceramics (“Firebugs,” Scout had instantly started calling them, and _of course_ the rest of the team had picked it up, because what could Pyro say to stop them?), three of the walking bombs, and an endless flood of recons. She couldn’t imagine how so many had fit in the transport. There had to be more than five hundred, but they fell more efficiently now. Between the seventeen of them they almost seemed like overkill, now that they had the hang of things.

Pyro was just darting out of the path of another falling titan, near the front lines and a few uncomfortable yards away from Scout, when something new caught her eye. She stopped short, panting, and tried to figure out what the squat, four-legged thing standing on the hill at the edge of the field was. It was about the size of a large pony, and plated like one of the armadillos she sometimes saw wandering around the New Mexico bases. It had no head but rather a cage of bars over where a head would go.

It wasn’t doing anything; it was just standing there, like it was watching. Something under the bars of its face was blinking steadily. It was all alone, though occasionally one of the machines marching past it would stop at its side, and its lights would blink faster before the recon moved on.

Uncertain, she fell back to the newly-reconstructed sentry nest. Out of anyone, the Engineer might have an idea. When she pointed it out to him, he furrowed his brow, looking toward it. “… No, I don’t got any idea. I don’t like it, though. Looks like it might be some kind’a support, the way it’s got the others comin’ to it. Hey, Snipes!” He waved the RED sniper, crouched a few feet away, over. “See that thing?”

“What, the dog-lookin’ one?”

“Yeah. Try shootin’ it, see what it does.”

The sniper did.

The dog-robot lurched sideways, the lights on its face all firing at once in a rapid, panicky display. Something on its side flew off, severed by the shot. It stumbled, caught itself, and that was all Pyro got to see before a half-dozen recons stormed in front of it. They clustered around it like a shield. Next to her, the Engineer made a soft, curious sort of sound. “Well, now. Ain’t that damn well somethin’.”

Pyro didn’t get to stick around after that, not as an approaching titan forced them to split up. Concentrated fire on one of its legs sent it toppling, and a barrage of grenades blew its head off. When she back off a safe distance—the last one they’d dropped had exploded—she looked up to see the dog-robot now encircled by a guard of recons. It was crouched low to the ground, the lights on its face flickering much more randomly now. For a few seconds it was perfectly still, and then it dove to one side, behind one of its guards. In almost the same instant a spray of turf leapt into the air where it had been standing—a missed sniper bullet.

Not a one of the other robots had ever tried to dodge an attack, at least that Pyro had seen. Certainly not an attack from so far away. They moved with single-minded purpose, heedless of any damage to themselves. This one, Pyro thought, was smarter than the others.

The ranks of the machines were thinning. Soon the dog’s own guard had dwindled to just three, and it had made no move to advance. “Observin’ us, I reckon,” the Engineer said when she mentioned this to him at her next visit to the dispenser. “Learnin’, like.”

Twenty minutes later, they gunned down the last platoon—three ceramics, four titans, two-dozen recons and a handful of the exploding ones (“blockbusters,” Pyro had heard Red call them, and it seemed as good a name as any). All that was left of Mannworks’ shipping yard when they were done was a scorched and blazing wasteland, studded with blast pits and scrap metal. As she looked around it occurred to Pyro that it did not look like they had destroyed some five-hundred robots; the bodies were not there. Did robots have respawn? Perhaps that was how there were so many.

Panting hard and trying to smother a smear of napalm that had stuck to her suit’s leg with her glove, she looked for the dog again. It had still made no attempt to move forward, crouched at its new position a few dozen yards to the side of its last one—out of the snipers’ line of sight, she noticed. As she watched, it and its three remaining recons turned and galloped back off into the trees, toward the transport.

The fire extinguished, Pyro dropped down to sit on the ground and pant. Her lenses were filthy and smeared with mud and oil, and her back felt like it would break, but they had won, and the sun was coming up.

The voice comm in her ear crackled. “Congratulations, gentlemen,” said the Administrator, in a voice that for once actually sounded pleased. “That was all of them. Well done.”


	9. 7: AIN'T SO DUMB

* * *

 

 

  
Guest art by [teafortteu](http://teafortteu.tumblr.com/)!

 

 

* * *

 

 

It was nearly seven in the morning by the time Pyro got all of her gear stripped off and put away. Respawn would have taken care of it all for her, but shooting herself sounded particularly unappealing just then. She was already wide awake, and wanted something to do that she could be sitting down for. Most of the team had gone back to bed, but Red joined her a few minutes after she’d started cleaning her shotgun. They were wearing layers of baggy t-shirts and sweatpants, all soft, solid-looking curves without the suit. Pyro could see old burns on their forearms and the side of their neck.

Pyro herself had swapped her chemsuit for holey jeans and an old black t-shirt that was too big for her, and a jacket. Her nice jacket. She’d seen it in a boutique in one of her trips up to Phoenix back home. It was hunter green with gold trim, and the salesgirl had called it a utility jacket, and said two or three times that it was for men and if Pyro wanted she could show her some ladies’ styles instead. Pyro had mostly ignored her, and only realized it was probably rude of her after she’d left with the jacket. She could have bought three months’ worth of groceries for the same price, but it looked so much like the one she’d had back in Boston that leaving it behind hadn’t even been an option in her mind. She wasn’t sure why. It fit like a glove, anyway.

Anyway. Red had sat down beside her on the bench someone had dragged into the weapons room, and sat quietly cleaning their fingernails with a Swiss army knife. The two of them sat in silence for a while as Pyro fussed with her gun. Finally she said to Red, “So do you have pyromania?”

Red jolted, blinking. They’d been staring out the window at the gray sky. “Me? Oh … well. Sort of? A little bit, I guess.”

“I just wondered. That’s what I’ve got, _officially._ There was a trial and everything.”

“Really? A trial?”

“Yeah, the store I worked at when I was a teenager got burned down and they blamed me for it.” Pyro paused. “Kind of. I mean, it was an accident. I didn’t mean to set it on fire, but it was the second time it had happened.”

“The second time you’d set it on fire?”

“No, the second time I’d burned it down.” Red let out a low, impressed whistle. Pyro grinned despite herself. “So they put me on trial for arson. I got really lucky. The DA the state sent was really, really good, she liked me. Not a lot of people did. Back then, I mean, I was kind of … messed up? But she got me acquitted by having someone evaluate me and diagnose me with pyromania. And there was … I think there was a technicality, because I guess it’s not _really_ arson unless someone lives there. So that’s why I’m not in jail.”

“Nicely done,” Red said, grinning back. “I once burned down a little junkyard. God, that was just something. Have you ever burned anything big? Besides the store, I mean, you probably didn’t get to stick around for that one.”

“Umm, a couple things. A bookstore and a … textile mill? I think?” Red’s eyes widened. Pyro hesitated. “A hockey stadium.”

Now Red gaped. “No _way_ ,” they said, and then, “I _have_ to know about that one, tell me _right now_ ,” and that, Pyro would decide later, was probably the exact moment they became friends.

Red was twenty-nine and a half years old, had been born and raised in New Mexico. They had grown up on a farm. They had five cats back home, all of whom were assholes except for the one Clarence had brought in as a stray. They played clarinet and followed college basketball, and had been building a collection of miniature succulents since they were seventeen. They wouldn’t say how RED hired them (that was fine, Pyro didn’t share her hire story either–no one on BLU team did, really), but assured Pyro that it involved a very large, very dramatic explosion.

Pyro learned all of this in under half an hour, and all of it was information freely offered. It made her feel a little out-of-place, not being able to share much back whenever Red asked her about herself, because she didn’t have much to share. She had a dog and a fireproof house and brain damage, and only two of those were things she was comfortable telling anyone not on BLU. But it was nice that Red wanted to know.

They chatted well past the time Pyro would’ve normally gone looking for breakfast. She didn’t notice she was hungry until Red said they needed to go and find Clarence for something, leaving her alone with her stomach. It growled as she put her weapons up, reminding her that eating was something she needed to do.

Now she had to find the cafeteria, which was a trick unto itself in Mannwork’s frustratingly large expanses. She took two wrong turns before she found the big double-doors leading into it, and stepped inside in a slightly worse mood than she’d been in a few minutes ago. But: food was imminent. That was at least something.

The cafeteria was empty, a little surprisingly. She wasn’t sure what time it was, but by now Pyro would have figured a few people would have gotten back out of bed already. Then again, maybe she was being an idiot by not getting her sleep when she could. Would the robots return soon? Hell, how long were they going to be at Mannworks? There were other Mann Co. properties that needed defending, surely. Were they ever going to be moved to those?

Whatever, she decided, making the walk across the vast and empty room to the little kitchen and its little yellow fridge. All she wanted right now was something to eat.

Leftovers from the last day and a half: bread, cheese, apple slices, pigs in a blanket, lots of rice, lots of sliced ham. A lonely and questionable-looking banana. A few other staples. Absurd quantities of milk. She pulled out some of the apple slices and the things to make a ham sandwich, and when she was done she didn’t bother sitting down at the clustered tables to eat. The counter was fine, and anyway the fight was really catching up to her, now. If she sat down it would probably be a lot harder to get up. She leaned back against the fridge and shut her eyes.

Approximately three minutes later, someone cleared their throat. Loudly, very close by. Pyro jerked so hard she slammed her head right against the fridge, and dropped into cussing before she could properly realize that the offending noise had come from the RED spy standing directly in front of her. Automatically, Pyro bristled. “What the hell?”

The spy gave her a bored look. “You are in front of the fridge. I have not eaten in something approaching fourteen hours, and it would be very obliging of you to move.”

Pyro glared at him, just for a second, and then got out of the way. She went back to stuffing apple slices in her mouth while he lingered in front of the fridge, turning his nose up at most of its contents. This damn spy. She hadn’t spoken to him since Coldfront—since before Dell left. “I didn’t see you at all in the fight,” she said eventually.

The spy did not answer at once. Instead he selected the remaining apples, from the fridge and straightened his back, turning to her as he closed it. “Then it seems likely I was doing my job, don’t you think?”

“I guess,” Pyro said. “What do you guys even do, can you backstab a robot?”

"Not quite. Our electro-sappers have proven quite effective in disabling them, though. We were in among them for much of it, slowing them down. And they seem unable to distinguish us from their fellows—Mann Co. was able to provide us with schematics for disguises.

“Oh.” She finished her apples. “… Where did Dell go after Coldfront?”

The spy gave her a cool, slow blink. Pyro fought down another glare, holding her tongue, waiting. And at last: “Our mutual friend Mr. Conagher? He was not my teammate. Why would I know such a thing?”

“Don’t play stupid, I know it was you that made him leave. I saw you talking to him. I know that’s why you helped him fix me.”

Now the spy looked amused. He leaned back against the fridge, taking a bite of his food and looking her over. “Fix you,” he repeated. “I was not aware you were broken.”

“Oh my God,” she hissed, putting a hand to her head. Unbidden, her mind leapt back to Scout, here in this same room, just yesterday. A surge of paranoia snapped at the back of her mind. No, no, no. This was the RED spy. He was a bastard to start with, and if he was anything like BLU’s he was cagey and played games and never gave anyone a straight answer.

She hadn’t made her recovery up, anyway, she assured herself. She couldn’t have, that didn’t even make sense. Anyone on her team, even Scout, would corroborate the story of how she’d changed. “Look,” she tried one more time, dropping her voice. “We’re on the same stupid team now, it’s my skin too if the Coldfront stuff gets out. I just want to know what happened to him.”

Before he’d died, obviously.

But the spy just said, “Then you must look for your answers elsewhere. Dell Conagher and what became of him is no concern of mine.”

Damn it. Just damn it all. Pyro dug her fingers into her palm as she watched him roll his shoulders and stroll out of the kitchen.

 

* * *

 

Twelve times. Scout had died and respawned _twelve times_ in the two or three hours the battle had taken place over. On a good day, in a regular fight against RED, across _eight hours_ , Scout would maybe respawn two or three times. Four if he was careless.

Twelve goddamn times. And he’d finished the fight with a torn tendon and a broken foot, wound up shooting himself in the face to get rid of it. The medics were frazzled and dazed-looking, and he never got targeted for heals anyway.

He felt better coming out of respawn, of course he did, without his whole leg screwed up. His mood could have been better, though. It was one thing to have an off day, but—God. He felt like he’d barely done anything, like he might as well not have been there. The robots were too deadly for him to get in close, and from a distance he couldn’t do much damage. He was chewing on this as he sat down to let the nausea wear off; he wasn’t expecting to hear the respawn doors slide open a minute or so later.

Out walked the RED sniper and scout. Clarence, wasn’t it? The sniper hadn’t given a name, had barely said anything, in fact. Even now he was silent as Clarence launched off about something. Scout watched in silence, wondering if they’d notice him where he sat behind the resupply locker.

“Jus’ I swear, man, damn, it was fun as hell at first but then you got them big bastards? The, the, what was they callin’ em. Eng said it. Titans? Giants? I dunno, the big ones. Those scare the _shit_ outta me, dude. Didja see what one of ‘em did to Heavy? Jus’, I get damn nightmares about that sorta shit.”

“Mmm.”

“Yeah, an’ like, I dunno, I mean you was tearin’ em new assholes left and right with that big damn gun’a yours. But me I’m down here with, what, a sawed-off an’ a pistol an’ a bat? That don’t do crap against robots. You ever try to hit five robots in one swing? It ain’t a picnic.”

“I got seven in one,” Scout said aloud as they passed. Both REDs stopped; the sniper glanced over at him from under his hat, and Clarence grinned, spinning on his heel. “S’easy,” Scout went on, “anybody could do that shit.”

“Sure, Babe Ruth. ‘Ceptin’ I saw that swing, an’ I am pretty sure you tripped on the backswing an’ died like right after.”

“The hell I did, I stepped in mud was all, lost my balance, wasn’t expectin’ it.”

“Yeah, an’ then you rolled right in front’a one of them guys what blow up. And _then_ you ran back toward the damn sentry with the thing on your ass! Almost got it blown up again! You gotta think about shit, dude,” Clarence said, shoving his hands in his pockets and dropping back against the wall next to him. His sniper went on without him. “I mean I died like pretty much right after, Red said I about drowned in a pile of them wiry ones. Still doin’ better’n you, though.”

“Screw off.”

Clarence lifted an eyebrow, his grin twisting into a plain smirk. “Aw, you gonna be like that? We’re on the same team now, buddy, we gotta be pals.” Scout rolled his eyes. “Come _on_ , we burned t’death together, man! That’s some real forged-in-battle friendship stuff.”

“Right, yeah, except we shouldn’t’a died at all, fuckin’ pyros not doin’ their jobs.”

“What, nah. They ran over, or yours did I guess. I didn’t see mine. They couldn’t’a done anything anyway, Red told me that too. It was napalm, you can’t put it out with air I guess. It’s like, gasoline jelly, air just spreads it around.”

“Oh, sure.”

Clarence squinted. “You callin’ Red a liar?”

“I ain’t callin’ nobody nothin‘, all I saw was our goddamn Pyro pullin’ up short soon as she saw who was burnin’.”

“You serious? Man, she wasn’t kiddin’ about you two not gettin’ along.”

Something angry prickled along the back of Scout’s neck. “Whatever,” he said, pushing it aside before it could catch fire. “What was your name again, C-somethin’? Clarence?”

“Yeah, don’t wear it out? And I been meanin’ to say, I ain’t real interested in callin’ you Scout, I’m Scout where I come from an’ it’d be too damn weird. What’s your name?”

Ugh. Scout grimaced. On thinking about it, though, he would rather be the one disclosing it, instead of, say, the RED spy. “Jeremiah.”

Clarence made a loud _pfft_ sound, biting back a grin. “Nice. That is too damn long, that’s like four syllables. I’m callin’ you Jerry.”

“The _hell_ you are,” Scout said, swiping at him. Clarence leapt to his feet and darted off, laughing, and when Scout bolted after the chase was on.

They ran breakneck through the long halls at top speed, skidding around corners, pushing off of walls, leaping deer-like over abandoned office detritus and cardboard boxes and once a kneeling BLU Soldier that had stopped to re-lace his boots. He hollered after them as they fled, laughing. The winding labyrinth of Mannworks was the perfect stage for an obstacle course, and despite himself Scout found he was grinning fiercely as he tore after Clarence. Clarence was a jackass and a show-off and couldn’t hit a ball to save his life, in Scout’s opinion, but the bastard could run.

Less than a minute later they had burst outside, whooping, yelling at each other between breaths. The sun was still climbing and the air was cold and crisp, like a good September morning should be. Maybe that was what happened, maybe the sun and the air and the thrill of their victory at the sight of the silent battlefield got into them and shook them up. In seconds they were racing, really racing, vaulting over low concrete blockades and the remains of blasted trees and buildings. They shot up the hill, where the robots had come from, and threw themselves headlong into the woods, heedless of danger. Turf sprayed up behind their heels like water, pine needles scraped at their skin as they blew past, deeper and deeper into the forest. The wind tore across Scout’s face and pulled at his cap, hit his lungs like ice water, _this_ was living, God, he was _alive._

 

__  
_ Guest art by [teafortteu](http://teafortteu.tumblr.com/)!_ __  


And then a few feet from him Clarence fumbled, skid, and fell flat on his face. Scout realized it an instant later, jogging to a halt and breathing hard. He looked down at Clarence as he rolled over, his counterpart sprawled and gasping. He considered things, and then kicked dirt over his face. Clarence sputtered, throwing his arms over his face. “Hey, screw off!”

“I ain’t the one tripped,” Scout said, grinning. His bad mood had vanished like so much exhaust, left behind, out run. “Get up, jerk, c’mon, you tired already, what is this? Fallin’ over like an idiot, how’d you even make the team?”

Clarence pushed himself to a sitting position, pawing dirt off his face, and then dropped one arm to the ground and twisted. His leg slammed into the side of Scout’s knee. Scout fell on his ass, stunned, and Clarence sat back on his hands and laughed. “Speak for yourself! You gotta work on those reflexes.”

“Shut the hell up, I ain’t gotta take this,” Scout said, snorting, but his grin hadn’t gone away. Maybe Clarence was alright after all. “Damn. Ain’t done that in forever.”

“Me neither. Where the hell are we?” Clarence picked himself up and brushed earth and pine needles off his legs, looking around as Scout followed suit. “Hell, I’m all covered in sap. It’s in my hair, damn.”

“I catch you callin’ me _Jerry_ , you’re gonna have a hell of a lot worse to worry about than sap.”

“Oooh, real scared.”

“Yeah you oughta be, an’ whaddya mean ‘where are we,’ what kinda scout are you? The factory’s that way,” Scout said, pointing southwest.

“I knew that,” Clarence said, and started loping down the path they had torn through the woods. Scout caught up in a few strides.

They walked in silence for a while, catching their breath. A light breeze ruffled pleasantly through Scout’s hair and across his skin, and the sun filtering through the branches and needles cast a sense of the ethereal across the forest. He stretched his arms over his head, taking in their surroundings. “So, what, you outta New York? You sound like you’re outta New York.”

“Yeah, Queens, closer to Bronx. You from Massachusetts?”

“Yeah, Boston, Southie.”

“Boston Southie?”

“South Boston, man, c’mon, get with it. What about baseball, you play baseball?”

“Nah, not so much. Only when my sisters wanted, really.”

“Sheesh, ferreal? How many sisters you got?”

“Six, all older ‘cept one, they’re all nutty. Every single one’a’em can kick my frickin’ ass, too, even the younger one. It’s a damn travesty. ‘Least I don’t ever gotta worry about them gettin’ hurt much.”

“Shoot, how’d you go an’ get hired if you’re gettin’ beat up by girls all the time?”

“They taught me everything I know,” Clarence said with a grin. “What about you, you got sisters?”

“Jus’ one. And seven brothers.” Clarence whistled. “Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard every damn joke in the book about it, don’t bother.”

“I wasn’t gonna, relax.”

On they went, swapping life stories. Clarence was three years younger than him, had just barely been scratching eighteen when RED snapped him up after getting wind of his four-minute mile. “Four an’ sixteen seconds,” he admitted, “but that don’t impress people so much as four flat. And it weren’t just the runnin’, but that was a lotta it. How’d you get hired?”

“I dunno, I got into a hell of a lotta fights as a kid, me and my brothers all did, kinda we were a gang of our own. Got real good runnin’ places quick and real good at battin’ heads in, mostly, is what it was.” Clarence nodded, and didn’t press. Good. Scout didn’t tell that story to people, how he got picked up by BLU.

The walk back seemed a lot longer than it felt like the run had taken them, even accounting for speed. As they went, Scout counted four rabbit-trails, five or six squirrel nets, and the deep, lumbering tracks of what must have been a moose. He didn’t have his compass, but he didn’t need it; the sun was bright and clear, and he could tell direction by the sun without even thinking about it.

The trees began to break apart, and now Scout found scuffled, torn grass and kicked-up needles. Speak of the robots, this was probably where a lot of them had moved through. There was too much disturbance of the tracks for him to really learn anything, but he was still studying them when Clarence said, “Hey, so, so yeah I was talkin’ to your Pyro before the fighting and all. Just ‘cause I was wonderin’ why Pauling put me and her together and you with my Red? You two don’t get along?”

Scout had to make a conscious effort not to sneer. “No, we don’t.”

“Okay, well, I mean, what’s that about? She seemed nice enough t’me.”

“Yeah, sure she does, if you buy that shit. She’s a goddamn psycho is what she is, fuckin’ murderer too. Don’t fuckin’ trust her, she’ll backstab you quicker’n the damn spies.”

Clarence looked puzzled. “Damn. Really? She just a snake?”

“Her whole stupid friggin’ suit’s full’a ’em.”

“Huh,” Clarence said. “Okay.”

 

* * *

 

 

If it hadn’t been for her encounter with Scout the day before, Pyro would have written the whole thing off as the spy being uncooperative. Now she worried as she picked around the battlefield, outside, taking in the sun as it showed itself through gaps in the clouds. She had always felt better moving than standing still.

The field was the same wasteland it had been when she’d left it that morning. A handful of robot remnants remained, in halves and pieces, and the last of the fires had either burned themselves out of been extinguished. She made her way from ash pile to ash pile, kicking through them until her boots were stained with gray.

There wasn’t any way the spy wasn’t just playing dumb. Right? She wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t prodded Dell into it, or that had been what Dell told her there at the end. She wouldn’t even be worrying about it because she’d still be too far gone to understand anything was wrong, if he hadn’t.

Maybe Scout had been screwing with her, too. That sounded like something he would do.

Ugh, this was stupid. If she kept thinking about it she’d work herself into a panic.

Seeking distraction, she started following the paths the robots had taken into the factory yard. The grass was trampled flat, or scorched, or simply gone, uprooted by metal feet. Here was where the blockbuster had blown up the sentry nest. Here was the spot Pyro had been standing when she realized the ceramic had been shooting napalm. Here was where one of the demomen had dragged her out of the way of another titan. The titans were horrifying, she had decided. She had seen one pick up RED’s heavy and just crush him in its hand. Like a caterpillar. A shudder crept through her as the memory resurfaced, and then she shoved it down with all the other horrors she’d seen in the last seven months.

Seven months. It’d been seven months since she saw Dell, five or so since his death. And the damn RED spy wouldn’t answer any questions.

Pyro wished she’d gotten to see the body when Miss Pauling had dug him up, at least.

By now she had reached the top of the hill outside the bounds of the yard, where the guard dog robot had stood watching them. The grass was trampled even flatter, here. Looking around the spot the guard dog had stood, she found mostly bullet shells and fragments of metal. One was larger than the others, half-buried in overturned dirt. She nudged it with her boot and it did not budge until she crouched and started tugging at it. It came free, earth still clinging to it. She turned it over in her hand, brushing it clean with the other. It looked like a satellite dish, dented. Severed wires hung from the bottom.

Interesting. There was only one thing she could think to do with it, as she went back down the hill and into the base.

Mannworks had a basement. It was high-ceiling and seemed larger than it could have possibly needed to be, and it harbored underground railroad tracks that led into black tunnels. Strange machinery that Pyro couldn’t begin to guess at the purpose of littered the concerted platforms. Old metal shipping crates sat along the edges of the walls, stacked in twos, with RED’s stylized bomb logo stenciled on their sides. There weren’t any BLU ones, at least as far as Pyro could tell. She brushed the surface of one as she made her way along the concrete floor; dust came away on her bare fingers. Her footsteps echoed.

This last was probably why the RED Engineer looked like he was waiting for her when she found him near the mouth of one of the tunnels. It was colder here, and Pyro pulled her jacket closer around herself, shivering. “Hey, uh, Engineer.”

The Engineer had looked at her when she’d been coming toward him, once or twice. It was a long walk. By the time she’d reached him, though, he’d put his focus back on the little machine in his hand, something riddled with wires and dials and gauges. He didn’t look up at her now. “Hey yourself, Scarface.” Pyro narrowed her eyes, but didn’t get a chance to answer before he went on. “Hope you ain’t come to light me on fire, none.”

“I wasn’t planning on it. Could change.”

The Engineer laughed, a loud, wry wheeze. It wasn’t anything like Dell’s laugh. “Yeah, well. So it goes, huh? What’s got you down here?”

Wordlessly, she produced the metal dish from one of her jacket pockets, letting him take it when he reached for it. “I found it outside,” she said. “Where that one robot was. The dog one.”

“That four-legged thing? Huh.”

“It’s a satellite dish, isn’t it? Like for radios.”

“Looks enough like it,” the Engineer said, turning it over in his hand like she had. “Somethin’ like that, anyway. Hmm. You shown this to Pauling?”

“Not yet. I thought you’d probably know more about it than her.”

He gave that wheezing laugh again, and thumped her shoulder with the back of his hand. “You’d be damn right about that. Guess you ain’t so dumb as you look. C’mon, we’ll go track her down.”

The Engineer started walking back toward the stairs without another word to Pyro. She glared after him for a few seconds, rubbing at her arm where he’d touched her, and then trotted after.

 

* * *

 

 

The sun was all the way up by the time the two scouts stepped back into Mannworks, and Clarence yawned and stretched and said he was going to go crash. Scout waved him off, without speaking. The subject of Pyro coming up again still had him sour, and if he went to bed now he'd just stew on it. He kicked around the halls for a few minutes before realizing he was drifting toward the room Miss Pauling had showed him the night before, the one with the telephone.

That sounded like as good a plan as any, calling home again. His mother might be around still, this early, having coffee like she always did. Brightening, he made his way to the office and dialed home.

 _Ring, ring, ring._ No answer. Huh. Scout cast around for a clock and found one that read 7:49AM; it'd be around ten back home, at least one person should've been home. Oh well. He'd try back later. As he hung up the phone he remembered with a twinge of irritation Roger's news about their mother's stalker, and the RED spy's cagey answers about the same. Stupid. His mother was fine.

... Hell.

Scout left, shoving the worry to the back of his mind. It was hard, not worrying about people. Had been hard for about four years now. It was sort of a pipe dream now, not worrying and fretting about dumb crap like people not picking up phones, or being late. He hadn’t always been like this, he used to be able to go a damn day without the impulse to make sure his people were all still alive.

Impulsively, he reached for his back pocket. Found it empty, of course, because he wasn't so stupid as to bring his brother's lighter out to the field anymore. No, that was tucked away safe in his bag back in his room, in a secret pocket he'd gotten his brother's girlfriend to show him how to sew. Jennifer had looked at him a little funny when he'd asked, especially when he wouldn't explain why he wanted it, but she'd done it. He didn't like leaving it behind, was all. It had vanished once already, he didn't want to lose it again. But, finding nothing, his hand instead drifted up to the tags that hung around his neck on their beaded chain. It was stupid of him to wear those everywhere, too, but he just … needed to. Nevermind the fact that they weren’t actually his brother’s, not really.

He was still thinking about the unanswered phone when he turned a corner and walked square into somebody. He grunted and jumped back a step. Opposite him, Pyro had done the same, throwing her hands up and blinking hard. Her expression blanked out when she realized who it was. Pointedly, she stepped sideways, as if to go around him.

The flash of anger from before blazed up again, clawed its way through him. He mirrored the action, drawing himself up to his full height--not a lot taller than Pyro, but enough. "Watch where you're frickin' goin'."

She just looked at him, without saying anything. Apathetic, of course she was. Scout hated listening to her stupid fucked-up voice anyway, all gravel and smoke-damage. Matched her ugly face and the weird, “off” cadence to her speech. Why was he the only one on the team that could see her for the monster she was?

Scout was about to open his mouth again when he noticed someone behind her. "Hey," said the RED Engineer, brusque, "you gonna get your skinny ass outta the way, or do I got to shift it for you?"

"Like you ever friggin' could," Scout shot back, but he let Pyro step around him this time. The Engineer snorted and followed her, and Scout watched them turn into the stairwell that would take them to the upper levels.

Great, he thought. Just what they needed, Pyro shacking up with the other Engineer. She'd probably drive this one away, too.


	10. 8: A HOLE IN YOUR HEAD

* * *

 

 

  
  


 

 

* * *

 

 

Shit.

She always did that, Pyro reflected with irritation as she and the Engineer climbed the stairs to Miss Pauling’s room. Either she took Scout’s bait or she clammed up. Every time. Stupid. This time he’d felt like he was _really_ looking for a fight, too.

The Engineer was talking. Not to her, though. “… damn stringy kid, thinks he knows a damn thing. Worse’n our Scout, didn’t figure that could so much as happen. Huh! Two of the bastards, maybe they’ll knock some sense into one another.”

She answered anyway. “Clarence seems nice.”

“Nice? Hell, nice don’t win rounds. Listen here, that boy’s as much a godforsaken fool as the rest’a my team. Worse, on account’a he’s the youngest.” He spat on the tile floor. “Never did like kids. Don’t know what Pyro sees in him, talk about your odd couples.”

Pyro. RED Pyro. This was obnoxious, sorting out names.

Wait. “Couple?”

“Hnn? Oh, yeah. Them’re together, been so for I guess a year, two years now.”

“Like … dating.”

“Do I got to spell it for you?” No, that wouldn’t help either. “Damn. Yes, like dating, or courtin’, or whatever other _romantic_ word you want to use. Those two are right weird. Guess I don’t know as I should’a told you, s’their business. Didn’t hear it from me, got it?”

“Sure,” Pyro mumbled, not really listening anymore. Clarence and Red. RED Scout and RED Pyro. No wonder they always seemed to be hanging around one another. Was it obvious, had she missed it? She’d missed the entire plot with some of the romance movies she’d watched with the team, before, not picking up the cues.

God. The pair of them looked so much like herself and BLU’s Scout. The implications that came along with that sent sick waves of discomfort rushing through her gut.

She couldn’t let herself focus on it. Instead she shouldered open the door to the second level of the building. Miss Pauling had moved shop down here, Red had told her that morning, kicking a few of the ex-REDs out of one of the old offices that had a proper, working lock. The Engineer said he knew where it was, because he’d been one of the ones to get the boot. In short order they were in front of yet another nondescript sort of door, this one with a frosted, barred window set in it. The Engineer knocked so hard Pyro jumped. “Miss Pauling!”

Faintly, Pyro thought she heard someone yelp, and then a light thud. A few seconds of the Engineer’s impatient sighing later, the door creaked open to reveal Pauling, hair askew and her glasses falling halfway off her face. There was a pen hanging loosely out of her mouth. She glanced between the two of them a few sharp times before her composure came back to her. “… Engineer,” she started flatly, “Pyro. What is it?”

“Cool it, missy,” the Engineer said. “Didn’t mean to be interruptin’ your beauty sleep and all, or whatever. Pyro here went and rooted something outta the field I figure might be important, though.”

“Oh,” Pauling said, reaching up to fix her glasses. “Oh, uh. Um. Okay, hang on a second.”

The door clapped shut in their faces. Pyro shook herself. That hadn’t been the Pauling she was used to. “Let me see the thing again,” she said to the Engineer. “The satellite?”

“For what?”

“I just want to see it. I found it, anyway.” He gave it to her. She turned it over in the light. It was just about the size of her hand, dented in places. Probably from other robots stepping on it. “I’ve never seen one this small,” she said. “It wouldn’t be able to pick up much of anything, would it?”

“Depends,” the Engineer said. “Like for example, did a damn Aussie build it? Because I’ve near quit tryin’ to figure those bastards out. It got a kangaroo anywhere on it?” It did not. “How ’bout a dingo?” No. “Then I don’t know. But I’ll bet you I get inside that thing, take a look at it, it’ll be a sight more powerful than probably either of us figure.”

 

* * *

 

Pauling joined them a minute or two later, looking more like herself. The all-business attitude was back, too. “Okay,” she said briskly upon opening the door again. “What did you find, Pyro?”

“It’s a satellite,” Pyro said, holding it out to her. Pauling looked it over carefully before taking it. “I found it up the hill—”

“I’m thinkin’ it came off that four-legged one,” the Engineer said. Pyro stopped short. “The one I was tellin’ you about, had the other ones guardin’ it? Snipes took a shot at it, figure he clipped this off it, maybe. Now, from what I’ve seen, ain’t any others’a those machines had a satellite anywhere on them.”

“Right,” Pyro said, “so it—”

“The way I see it, that one’s receivin’ some kinda transmission somewhere further off than that damn horror of a tank they all came in. Probably it’s gettin’ orders from wherever that is, an’ probably it’s spittin’ them orders right back out to the other tin men. _So_ ,” he went on, and Pyro decided to give up on getting a word in edgewise, “my idea is we find that thing right quick next time they show up. We shut it down, maybe the whole operation falls apart. Cut ’em off at the head,” he added, grinning. It was unsettling with the goggles.

Miss Pauling had been examining the little satellite the whole time he spoke. Now she handed it back to Pyro and looked straight at the Engineer. “If you’re right—if it’s getting instructions from somewhere else, I mean—would you be able to trace that signal? Find out where?”

“Not with just a damn satellite. That thing all on its own ain’t gonna tell us shit as far as coordinates go. If I could get my hands on the critter, now, that’d be another story.”

“Then we should trap it,” Pyro said.

Both Pauling and the Engineer looked at her at once. “That makes sense,” said Pauling, and at the same time the Engineer said, “And how d’you propose we do that?” They stopped and glanced at each other, but only the Engineer continued. “Damn thing wouldn’t even come down the hill last time.”

He was right. Pyro grimaced, glancing sideways. If she’d think for two seconds before saying things—wait. “… The spies’ sappers can disable the robots, right?”

“I suppose they do. Not any longer than ten, maybe fifteen seconds, though. Nothin’ like how long we’d need to pull that thing in a cage.”

“Well, how many sappers do we have? Or can we make them stronger? Maybe it has, I don’t know, maybe it has a surge protector. Something that shuts it down if it gets overloaded.” She was spitballing, and the Engineer was looking at her like she was crazy. Maybe she was—well, more crazy than she already knew she was. What the hell did she know about robots, anyway? “It’s just an idea,” she finished lamely. “And if you’re right about it broadcasting orders, disabling it might do something to the rest of the robots too.”

“It sounds like a plan to me,” Miss Pauling said. The Engineer glanced her way, quirking an eyebrow. “I mean, I’m not exactly a tactician. But it sounds like it makes sense. Engineer?”

“Well,” the Engineer said, slowly. “Reckon it ain’t a _bad_ plan. Don’t know as it’s a good one, either, though. That’s a lotta variables, that takes our spies outta respawn range if the critter’s up on the hill and I don’t know as they’d go for that.”

Pyro blinked, and looked at Pauling. “It does?”

“Yes,” Miss Pauling said, frowning. “The radius on this base is much smaller than you guys are used to. That’s why we told you all to stay down in the yard no matter what. We really can’t afford to lose any of you.”

“Weren’t enough notice to get a proper respawn setup goin‘,“ Engineer said. ”Won’t be for the most part, the way it’s soundin’, and to be frank I ain’t keen on messin’ with somethin’ that important much. Right now the signal’s gettin’ bridged from Sawmill’s transmission, it just barely covers the building and the yard. I was checkin’ the basement when you came rooted me out, it barely gets down there either. So don’t be stupid and get yourself outside’a the range. An’ I should think the rest of the team oughta be informed on the why, too, and quick, seein’ as how they’re all idiots. Pyro, get on that, willya?”

“What? I—well, fine. What’s the range?”

The Engineer heaved an exasperated sigh. “Just go an’ make sure they all know not to get any of themselves killed before I get a chance to tell ’em where not to do it, that clear enough for you? G’wan, get.”

“Don’t order me arou—”

“And gimme that satellite back before you go,” he added, snagging it out of her hands.

A snarl pulled at her face. She had nearly given into it, intent on tearing the son of a bitch a new one, when Pauling edged a little closer and said, “Would you mind awfully, Pyro? I’m sorry, I’m sure you must be tired, but I’d really appreciate it. I have so much to do already.”

… Ugh. “Yeah,” Pyro said at last, defeated. She would sooner obey Pauling than this other bastard anyway. “Sure, alright.”

 

* * *

 

No one was ever easy to find when you wanted them. Pyro hunted all through the top three floors and only found eight of her sixteen teammates, the Engineer notwithstanding.

She found Sniper and Spy bickering in the cafeteria, though, which was a welcome sight in its familiarity. “I am simply pointing out that there is no excitement to your food, no zest,” Spy was saying as she came up to them. “It is _serviceable,_ as you seem to dearly enjoy reminding me, but I would remind _you_ that we are not, in fact, in the Australian Outback. Food need not be merely _serviceable._ ”

“So it oughta be a mad heap of whatever you find lyin’ around, is that it?” Sniper answered, not looking up from what he was doing. Making lasagna, it looked like. Had there been things for lasagna in the fridge? She couldn’t remember. Maybe Sniper had just had them in his camper, she’d seen that sitting around on one side of the building. She kind of wouldn’t have been surprised if that was the case, especially if it was for the purpose of one-upping Spy. “I don’t think there’s even names for half the stuff _you_ make.”

“That is because cooking is art, in its highest form,” Spy said with an exaggerated roll of his eyes. He glanced at Pyro as she paused next to the counter he was leaning on, and took a thoughtful drag of his omnipresent cigarette. “Food does not need a name on its own. It simply _is._ Am I correct, Pyro?”

“I guess so?”

“You see,” Spy said, smug. “You are still having difficulty with reading, Pyro, yes?” She scowled at the reminder, but nodded. “I must teach you the art of cooking. Done properly there is no need for written instructions.”

“Sure, great,” she said. “Listen, Pauling sent me to tell everyone that respawn’s range is screwed up right now. So don’t kill each other over food again.”

“Was only the one time, Pyro,” Sniper said.

“Yeah, okay. Have you guys seen the demos?”

They directed her outside, where the sun had gotten bright and hot. Pyro shrugged out of her jacket and tied its arms around her waist before rounding the side of the building, where she could hear talking and rustling.

Just as she turned the corner there as a boom, one that made her yelp and shield her face. It was followed by whooping laughter. Sure enough, both demomen sat there before her on overturned crates, a mostly-demolished six-pack between them. The charred and blackened remains of something lay strewn across the little gated dirt road that led into the factory yard. Lots of somethings, actually. They’d apparently been blowing things up. Her Demo, the BLU one, waved enthusiastically when he saw her. “Pyro, lassie, c’mere! Have a drink!”

This early? Probably not. She waved him off and gave the two of them the heads-up. When asked, neither had seen the scouts, nor Red. “Though Clarence an’ our Pyro might be in their room,” the RED demoman added as an afterthought, raising his eyebrows. “ _If_ ye know what I mean.”

Demo—Tavish—whatever—burst out laughing. It took Pyro a little too long to figure out why. “Oh,” she managed once she did. “Then … okay. I mean, they … probably won’t kill each other, right?”

Now both her teammates started guffawing. Pyro excused herself before the conversation could get any worse.

So that left Scout, she thought as she headed back inside, and very carefully she toyed with the idea of not telling him. It seemed unlikely he’d get himself killed between now and whenever the Engineer could get the news out properly.

But if he did … Pyro grimaced, thinking about what Pauling had said. And she didn’t need another corpse on her conscience, no matter how badly Scout treated her.

Well, she’d check the second floor again, she decided, and altered her course to take her to the stairwell. Scout was sharing a room with Medic, who had been present when she went to check. Maybe she could at least tell Medic to tell him if he saw him first, and she’d get the whole thing out of the way like that.

She was halfway up the stairs when one of the doors overhead slammed shut, and the sound of feet moving rapidly down the steps followed. Just a few seconds later, Scout appeared. He stopped for just an instant, scarcely sparing her a glance, and then kept going. “Hey,” Pyro started, “wait.”

Scout stopped again, his expression only just disguising contempt. “Yeah, what now.”

Briefly, she reconsidered telling him after all. Oh well. “Respawn isn’t working right,” she said. “Ask Pauling if you want. Don’t get killed.”

“I know that.”

“Oh. Did Medic tell you?”

“No, _you_ told me, for chrissakes, this’s maybe the third time even, you got a hole in your head you can’t remember this shit?”

Pyro narrowed her eyes. “I did not. Don’t fuck with me, Scout.”

He snorted. “I don’t need to, y’do it enough on your own. You told me in this same damn stairwell an’ you told me again in the hall like ten minutes ago, goddamn. I know you are just _real_ fuckin’ torn up over what you did to my brother, _firebug_ , but this’s ridiculous.”

Pyro had gone very stiff. Her fingernails were digging into the steel handrail, and it hurt. “… Fine,” she said at last, and keeping her voice even over the paranoia now rising in her chest hurt, too. “Great. Get out of my way.”

“You don’t gotta get so _mad_ , it ain’t _my_ fault you don’t remember shit,” Scout said, rolling his eyes. He shoved past her to head down the stairs. Pyro stayed rooted where she stood until she heard the door open and shut somewhere behind her.

She didn’t really remember the walk back to her room. When she realized this, sitting on her rumpled bedroll, it sent another shock of nervousness rolling through her. With a groan she rubbed hard at her eyes before shaking herself and taking a look around.

After Coldfront and after Pauling’s interview where she had tried to put together Pyro’s miracle recovery, BLU had arranged for Pyro to see a specialist. Pyro had never exactly been clear on what the man had been a specialist _in_ , exactly, but he had known a lot about something called “combat stress reaction” and hallucinations. He hadn’t helped much in actually getting rid of her problems, and she’d only seen him four or five times before he mysteriously disappeared and was never replaced, but he’d taught her some coping techniques. None of them involved fire, but sometimes they helped more. (This was shocking in itself. Nothing had ever helped her more than fire.)

Taking inventory of everything she could see around her, in particular, was her favorite. Pyro pulled a lighter, a plain Zippo she couldn’t remember the origins of, out from the jacket she had at some point put back on. She clapped it open and shut as she counted every object in the room.

Soldier’s gear, over there against the wall: three dented helmets, an already-folded bedroll atop a pillow, a collection of other mysterious and patriotic-looking items. A chicken feather. A copy of that magazine with the guns and hairstyles. On the opposite wall, Sniper’s stuff, just the bedroll and a single tiny bag. Two nails on the far wall, a knot in the wood of the door with its brass handle and hinges. And Pyro’s own belongings, scattered more than a little haphazardly around her bedroll: two lighters, a book of matches, three candy necklaces still in their packages. An ink pen and a tiny pad of sketching paper, used mostly for drafting new building ideas and doodling abstract patterns. She’d been messing with the idea of welding some spare metal together to make a sculpture, lately. There was a bag just a little bigger than Sniper’s, with her clothes and things. On top of that, lying face-down, was the photo Sniper had taken of her.

She paused, having forgotten about this last. She picked it up and turned it over in her hands. Amid Sniper’s gear she could just make out the strap of the instant camera he’d shown her yesterday in the bag, black and gold. She looked at the picture again, studying it. It was sharp and clear, much crisper an image than she would have expected from such a little machine. Australians. She should ask Sniper if Australia had developed anything to improve memory.

… Or.

When Sniper walked in twenty minutes later, Pyro had dug the camera out of his bag. She hadn’t felt confident enough to do anything beyond taking it out and looking at it, but the more she thought about it—“Sniper?”

“Hm?” His eyes fell on the camera. “… ‘Ey, you been diggin’ in my stuff?”

Shit, she’d meant to put it back before Sniper returned. “Just for this,” Pyro said, sheepish. “Sorry. I was wondering if I could borrow it.”

Sniper frowned at her a moment longer, probably annoyed. Great, she’d messed her chance up already. But then he shrugged. “I s’pose so, if you really want. Hell, keep the damn thing. Wasn’t plannin’ on usin’ it m’self.”

“Really?”

“Sure, if it keeps you from rummagin’ around in me things. Got about a mile of film, too, if you need. S’got the instructions printed on the package, pretty straightforward.”

“Are there pictures?” There were, little arrows and diagrams that got the gist of it across pretty well. Pyro was starting to like Australia.

And that was it, really. Sniper gave her a few rolls of film to start and then dropped down to soak up the sun that was bleeding through the window onto his sleeping bag, and Pyro found herself the new owner of the instant camera. A sort of pleasedness came over her as she got used to its weight around her neck, and as her first photo she snapped Sniper with his hat over his face. It came out of the camera with a click and a buzz, and a minute or two later she had the color photo in her hand.

Scrambling, she grabbed for the pen. When she had told Miss Pauling that she could not read it was only mostly true; her ability came and went depending on the day, though it never came easily. Writing, however, she’d found to be another thing. After a few months of awkwardly copying letters off of one of those big wooden alphabet boards you’d give to a child, something had shifted. She could write again, with relative ease. Had a hell of a time trying to _read_ it, afterward, but it was nice to not be totally useless.

Carefully, and ignoring the fact that the tall, narrow lines she left behind mostly jut looked like chickenscratch to her, she wrote _thanks, Sniper_ on the white space beneath the photo.

This, this was good. This could possibly be great. She couldn’t trust her memory, but a photograph existed outside of her head. A photograph was proof. And Scout couldn’t tell her she’d made up something she had proof of.

Carefully, Pyro tucked the picture of Sniper next to the one of herself, and maybe even let herself smile about it.

Yes. This was good.


	11. 9: IT WAS A COPING MECHANISM

* * *

 

 

  
  


 

 

* * *

 

 

 

The next attack came two days later, in the middle of Pyro’s lunch. The speakers crackled and then the Administrator’s voice was tearing at her ears. “Mercenaries! Prepare for battle. The next robot assault will be upon us in thirty minutes.”

Pyro shoved the rest of her apple into her mouth and scrambled to get her gear together with the rest of the team, thankful that at least this time it was happening after she was already awake.

An hour later she was sprawled on her ass, bleeding to death, with robots storming toward her.

Just a moment ago she and Red had been airblasting machines into a deep, black pit they’d found beneath one of the sheds as the robots marched past. It was tricky and dangerous work, and the compression bursts didn’t send the robots as far as they would a human. Pyro had just fallen back and turned, intent on running back to the dispenser, when she noticed it: a beeping, flashing ball of shrapnel and gunpowder tearing off from the pack of metal men and heading straight for the sentry nest.

Pyro had never had to protect a sentry nest before, not really, not as herself. Dell had left as soon as she’d recovered, after all. This probably explained why as soon as she noticed the blockbuster she lost control. Before she knew what she was doing she had veered off course, making straight for it. She couldn’t stop. The other part of her— _Alice,_ she thought in a resigned, derisive way—had taken the reins.

Pyro could only watch as Alice barreled headlong into the bomb, sending it teetering and rolling down a mild slope near the nest. She watched as she gave chase, trying to drive it off with airblasts that barely made the thing move an inch. And she watched as Alice, stupid thing that she was, realized the robot wasn’t budging and switched triggers on the flamethrower.

As soon as the fire touched it, it detonated in a brilliant display of sparks and flame. Pyro heard a shriek that was probably her own and then she was flying, and then she hit something, and then everything was black. When she came to again, the pain hit her like a punch to the gut, but it was still dull. Behind glass. Now she was slumped awkwardly against the base of a building, her back to a set of concrete stairs, and her whole mouth tasted like blood. She was screaming, too, broken by huge gulps of air. Everything hurt, but it took Pyro a few seconds to realize why Alice was carrying on the way it was: she’d lost most of her right arm and a chunk of her side and thigh.

And in the corner of her vision she could see robots toward her. Of course.

She didn’t understand how the possession of her body worked, or why it could be taken from her when Alice felt like doing so. She didn’t understand why she could usually—not always, but usually—wrest it back, either, if she tried hard enough, if she could focus. It was like trying to turn a stuck valve and hurt in its own unique way, but this time it was easy. She tore her control back, letting Alice vanish into whatever dark part of Pyro’s brain she lived in, and the pain gushed into her like water. She bared her teeth against it, choking down a wail.

Inventory. Quick. What could she do, what did she have? Her flamethrower had held together, still in her hand. She forced herself to her feet using it as a crutch. The agony gnashed at her, fuck, _fuck_ , she wanted to lay down and die and make it _stop._ Instead she dragged herself up the stairs, ignoring the blood still pouring from her wounds. She made it halfway up the eight steps before she collapsed.

The hum of the machines was screaming in her ears. She cringed away from it. When she opened her eyes again, five glowing yellow lights set in a gunmetal-gray face met her gaze. The recon lifted its weapon to finish her off.

 _Well,_ she thought, _I tried._

When something sent the robot reeling and an instant later blew its head apart, Pyro was too stunned to even flinch. Seconds later she was being dragged up the stairs by her remaining arm and the back of her suit. Her own pained screech was lost in the howl of the motors.

Darkness.

When she regained consciousness, the first thing she was aware of was that horrible drone. The next was the familiar beep of a sentry, and the whirr of a dispenser. She felt stiff and shaky, but not in pain. Her arm was back. She groaned, pulled off the mask, and looked around for the Engineer.

There he was, shoving shells back into his shotgun as the sentry let off another round of rockets. Pyro carefully got to her feet and took stock of the field. Same as ever: an endless torrent of metal.

Next to her she heard a shotgun snap shut. “Oh, you’re awake,” the Engineer said as she looked at him. “Took you damn well long enough. What in the name’a God were you doin‘, settin’ that bomb on fire? You stupid?”

“I panicked,” Pyro snapped. It was not entirely a lie. “And your sentry’s still up, so relax.” The Engineer grunted. “Whatever. How are we doing?”

“Fine, I s’pose.”

“Have you seen the dog?”

“Nope. Got the spies waitin’ up there, though. Still outta respawn range, I might add, so if they up and get killed we’ll have you to thank for it.”

This was stupid. The Engineer was stupid. Pyro hissed something and hunted around for her flamethrower—there it was, on the other side of the dispenser. She grabbed it and was about to pull her mask back on when the Engineer caught her arm. “Hey,” he said, “look, I ‘ppreciate the guardin’. Just you ain’t doin’ any good if you go get yourself screwed up to where I gotta go abandonin’ my post to rescue your stupid ass. Get it?”

“Shit, sorry, I’ll try getting disemboweled closer next time.”

She didn’t expect the Engineer to break out into another of those heavy wheezing laughs. “God, Scarface, damn straight. You ain’t so bad.”

“Gee, thanks.”

He laughed again, looking back out over the field. He paused. “Take a look at that,” he said, letting go of her to point up the hill. “Guess we’re about to find out what that thing does.”

Pyro followed his gaze, the mask still halfway over her head. Sure enough, just in sight she could make out the dog-robot. Once again it had a battery of recons stationed around it, effectively blocking it from any clear sniper shots. “I see it,” she said. “So we’re trapping it?”

“More or less. Weren’t a bad idea, just tricky, with there bein’ a stream of ‘em comin’ in behind it like that. And I couldn’t expand the respawn signal so far as I woulda liked, so they’re still doin’ this the old-fashioned way, like I said.” He gestured toward one of the towers behind them. “I got one’a the snipers coverin’ ‘em, but that’s about as much as we can do from back here. But yeah, I cranked up the voltage on both of them sappers they got, tested ‘em on one of the recons. Fried it but good.“ He looked up at the hill again, another few seconds. Then: ”Alright, enough jawin’. Get the hell back out there, smoky, Red’s gettin’ their ass kicked without’cha.”

“… Don’t call me that,” Pyro said, and pulled the mask back on.

 

* * *

 

Loping back onto the field, she returned Red’s nod and got to work. The second wave was thinning out now, and already they’d become much more efficient at tearing the machines down. Pyro kept glancing up the hill, checking if the dog was still there. It had not moved except to shift positions and acquire better cover. No one had been shooting at it, as far as she could tell, probably to protect the spies.

The last titan fell from a burst of rockets, crushing a group of recons behind it, and as she looked around Pyro realized they must have finished the wave off. The Administrator had told them to expect five in total, this time, so there were three left. Maybe none, if her plan worked. And it was her plan, wasn’t it. The thought was startling.

Five minutes passed as the team collected themselves, no one talking much as they refilled ammo caches and exchanged observations. The bombs liked to flank you and stuck to the shadows. The firebugs could be fought by focusing on the arm joint until it snapped off; there was little they could do without a point of ignition. Pyro listened to it all as she jostled in between the RED demoman and Clarence for room at the dispenser, still exhausted. Clarence scooted a little further away from her than he really needed to, but the extra room wasn’t something she was going to complain about.

The dog still stood at the top of the hill, watching them.

All too soon came the sound of marching footsteps and the scream of a hundred motors. The team scattered, moving back into position, and that was when it all went to hell.

Movement atop the hill caught Pyro’s eye, and she pulled up her mask to make it out better. Two of the five robots surrounding the dog were breaking out of their stiff postures, and as one they turned on the dog. The disguised spies moved as one, and Pyro saw the familiar shape of the electro-sappers in their hands just before they closed in on their quarry.

She would have sworn the machine tensed as they did, coiling robotic muscles. An instant before the spies could strike it spun, impossibly fast for its size, and slammed straight into one of them. There was a yell and a crunch, and the RED spy’s disguise shattered as the dog threw him to the ground. Overhead came a huge boom, and something made the dog lurch to one side—a sniper bullet. Undeterred, it turned back on the stunned spy, pinning his arm to the ground with a sharp, bladelike foot even as he was scrambling for his revolver. The motor whine of the advancing robots grew louder.

The sniper rifle’s report rang out again, clipping the dog’s leg. It buckled as the metal crumpled, dropping it on top of the spy, and a pained howl followed. In the midst of it all the second spy, still disguised, took his opening and sprung to attach the sapper to the robot’s back.

A high, metallic shriek cut through the pervading hum, and with it came sparks dancing over the dog’s chassis. In jerky, harsh movements it got to its feet and rounded on its betrayer. Behind it, the other three recon machines were closing in on the RED on the ground, but Pyro wasn’t watching him. She was watching the massive guard dog lurch toward her teammate, still sparking and shrieking. Spy was still disguised, stepping slowly backwards, but the dog continued to advance.

“Shit,” she heard Clarence say behind her, and that seemed to break the spell. The Engineer started shouting orders, for the others to get up there and help, _now_ , but before anyone could do anything the dog threw its feet out, bracing itself, and something unfolded from its back. Two somethings. Pyro didn’t realize they were mounted turrets until they opened point-blank fire.

Spy fell.

The body seemed to blur out of existence—the dead-ringer watch, Pyro realized with relief, of course. The rifle rang out again, shattering one of the turrets. The dog did not notice. Instead it bounded forward, slamming a forefoot down onto thin air. Another shot cracked into its side. The dog shifted its weight forward, the lights on its flash blazing blue. A scream rose above the motor-sound. Spy reappeared.

When the foot punched through his chest like so much buckling metal, the scream abruptly stopped.

By now Red and Medic and some of the others had gone charging up the hill. They were halfway up when another recon appeared; from where, Pyro could not be sure, though now it stood behind the robot. In its hands it held a sapper, and it a single motion the disguised RED spy slammed it down next to the first sapper.

The metallic shriek came again, breaking off into an ear-piercing wave of static. Pyro had to clap her hands over her ears, and saw her teammates do the same. It crackled and died in seconds. The dog collapsed, its foot still embedded in Spy’s ribcage. The lights on its face went dark.

Nearby, the three real robot guards slackened. In the distance the screaming engines seemed to stutter and couch, and the uniform noise of hundreds of marching footsteps abruptly fell apart. In a dim, automatic sort of way, Pyro readied herself to fight, but …

The machines cresting the hill were not the same lockstep army they had faced before. These ones were bumping into each other, stumbling. One titan stopped cold in its tracks before a particularly large boulder, and all the ones behind it kept walking into its legs. Not a single one opened fire, even as they marched mindlessly past her to walk into the fence.

The plan had worked. The army had fallen apart.

Pyro turned to see her teammates trying to lever the dog off of an unmoving body, its undercarriage smeared with blood.

 

* * *

 

The decommissioned dog had been dragged into the factory by the heavies. With their metaphorical head removed, the remaining robots had milled about stupidly, and were made short work of. The two waves meant to follow did not appear.

Medic, their Medic, was the one that came to Pyro and the five other BLUs and quietly explained that Spy was dead. He had been dead by the time they had reached him, just a few yards from the respawn boundary. He was gone. For good.

Most of the team had just stared at him at first, in silence. In the corner of her eye Pyro could make out the nine gathered REDs a ways away, listening to something Miss Pauling was saying. She wasn’t sure when Pauling had arrived. Solemn, even sympathetic glances were occasionally sent the BLUs’ way. The RED spy, though, seemed as unaffected as ever.

It was Sniper that spoke first. He’d taken off his hat, he’d been looking at it the whole time Medic was talking. “Well,” he said in a sharp, thick sort of voice. “At least we’ve got a bloody fucking great piece of metal to show for it, haven’t we?”

The team was silent. After a few seconds, Sniper turned and walked stiffly back into the base.

The rest of the day felt impossibly long to Pyro. It stretched on, yawning and slow, and nothing seemed to move. She couldn’t focus on anything, all her memories skipped like records. She had a faint impression of helping a silent and grim Demoman make dinner. The RED team, all nine of them, bunched together at the cafeteria tables; the remaining seven BLUs took their plates and disappeared off where they would, in ones and twos. One moment Pyro was putting fried ham on her plate, and in the next she was sitting outside, around the side of the factory where she’d found the demomen the other day. (It had been just the other day, right?) When she looked down at her plate it was empty, though she had no memory of eating it.

She pushed the plate away. Eventually she realized she was lighting a cigarette, and a few seconds after that that she was halfway done with it. It didn’t seem to be helping. Cigarettes weren’t supposed to go that fast, she was pretty sure. She tried flicking on her lighter and looking at that instead, but the flame kept going out in the wind.

Eventually she was opening the door to her room. This time she did not bother to wonder how she got there. Soldier was sitting on his bedroll, aggressively wiping down the brass bugle he sometimes took onto the field. He ignored her as she went and dropped down onto her own spot. Sniper was gone. Even his belongings had vanished.

Exhausted, she spent a few minutes fidgeting with her camera. The camera Sniper had given her. She took a picture of Soldier and simply labeled it with the date, 9/9/71. She thought that was right, but she didn’t really want to ask Soldier to make sure. It joined the other two pictures, and she went to bed.

The next day was black and rainy and humid. Pyro spent most of it on her own again, checking through her weapons, sketching vague ideas of things to make once she returned home. She did not speak to any of her team. It was like she was in a fog, or behind glass, and she wasn’t really sure what to do about it. She wished it would stop.

A little past two in the afternoon, she came across Red in one of the stairwells. They were sitting with their face pressed against the railings dividing the stair levels, looking out a window that showed the thick pine forest. Pyro hesitated, not sure if she’d been noticed as she came up the steps, but Red spoke. They did not look at her as they did. “Hey there. Afternoon.” Pyro just waved.

Red exhaled, finally glancing down at her. They looked her over for a few seconds. “Doing okay?” Was she? Pyro shrugged. Red sort of smiled. “I kind of figured.”

Was she that easy to read? Pyro grimaced. Even that felt like it was behind glass, far away, distant. Everything was distant, even her own voice as she said, “Do you know what the plan is?” It was the first time she had said anything that day, she realized. Her voice felt rougher than she thought it should.

“Afraid not,” Red said. “Miss Pauling’s been kind of … quiet about things, I guess. Everyone has.”

“Yeah,” Pyro said, sitting down next to them.

The two of them sat in silence a while. Eventually Pyro rummaged around in her pockets for a lighter for the countless time that day. She found a scratched-up pink BiC and flicked it on and off for a while, staring at it. She had thought Red was still looking at the forest. When they said, quietly, “Coping mechanism?” it startled her more badly than she would have admitted to. She froze with her thumb still on the flint.

“What?”

“What you’re doing. Turning the fire on and off.”

“I … I don’t know.”

“They’re good to have,” Red said, gentle. “Gives you something to focus on, you need something like that. Keeps you from going crazy. I bake when I’m upset. I have a bad week and suddenly the house is full of lemon bars and snickerdoodles. Clarence gets mad at me, he says I’m gonna make him fat. But _he_ cooks when he’s stressed out, and he just puts lard into _everything._ ”

Pyro tentatively gave them the smile they were fishing for. “He doesn’t look like he could gain weight if he tried.”

“He can’t. It’s funny.”

There was something tugging at the back of Pyro’s mind. It took her a second to seize upon it. “Spy told me he’d teach me to cook the other day,” she said after a moment of dwelling on the memory. Making sure it had been real. “Our spy. I should go ask him about that, I’m—I’m having a weird day. Have you seen him around?”

Red’s smile had faded. It was replaced by knit brow and a drawn face. They looked at her for a long time before reaching out and laying their hand on her knee. “Sweetheart. You don’t remember yesterday?”

The touch distracted her from the question, foreign and not entirely welcome. Pyro managed not to push their hand off before she spoke, but only just. “Yesterday?”

Red squeezed their eyes shut. In the following silence Pyro’s head began to throb, a profound kind of wrongness that she couldn’t place seeping into her veins. When Red exhaled it was slow and heavy and sad, and it matched their expression when they opened their eyes again. “On the hill with the robots, Blue. With the big one, the dog. Your medic told you.” Pyro looked at them blankly, half listening and half trying to pin down the scurrying, insistent thought scrabbling through her head. “You … your spy is dead,” Red said at last. “The robot killed him outside of respawn. Remember?”

“What’re you …”

_A metallic whine, a human scream, the lurch in Pyro’s own gut as the dog drove its leg through Spy’s ribcage._

“… oh, God,” Pyro mumbled.

“Blue—”

“Shit. _Shit._ I— _fuck._ ”

Her own chest had seized up, tightening, rigor mortis curling her into a ball. She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes until it hurt, but nothing could get the memory suddenly replaying itself over and over in her mind’s eye to stop. Spy was dead. Dead like Dell was dead, like Tobias was dead. “ _Shit,_ ” she said again, not expecting the way her voice buckled, and she jolted when she felt an arm settling over her shoulders.

“Shhh,” Red was saying. “Shh, Blue, it’s okay. I’m sorry. It’s okay.”

“I—it’s not _okay_ , he _died_ and I _forgot about it_ , I—”

“Coping mechanism,” Red said, smoothing some of her hair out, not flinching at all when their hand brushed the scars on her scalp. “It was a coping mechanism. It’s just something that happens, it doesn’t make you a bad person. It’s okay.”

It was not okay. It was absolutely not okay and Red didn’t get it, it was okay for someone else, maybe, but not for Pyro. Not _her._

But even so, Pyro let herself stay like that, pawing at her eyes and breathing painfully as Red rubbed circles in her back. She didn’t know what else to do.


	12. 10: IT REALLY ISN'T FAIR

 

 

 

_Ring … ring … ring …_

At the eleventh ring Scout slammed the phone’s handset back into its cradle and cussed under his breath.

Two days and three calls later and still no one was picking up at home. Scout glared at the phone for what felt like a long time, his mind wandering. His eyes felt heavy. Sleep had not been kind, not since—well, since Spy.

Damn Spy. Damn stupid ugly awful Spy. Scout hadn’t ever even _liked_ Spy, he was a snotty stuck-up sonnuvabitch that made an endless mockery of everyone around him. He could cook well and he was great at being a backstabbing snake, and in Scout’s opinion those had been his most redeeming qualities.

But he’d still been Scout’s teammate. Up until a couple of months ago that had meant—to Scout, at least—that he was as good as family. Pyro had ruined that for him, too, turning them all to her side. Hell, if what he’d heard the RED engineer say about the plan was right, it was _Pyro’s fault_ that Spy was dead. She’d been the one to suggest trapping it.

He added another tally to his mental list of people she’d destroyed. It was getting to be a long list, in his opinion.

But he’d kept his mouth shut about her, because he _was_ capable of keeping his mouth shut, thanks. Maybe it was because he hadn’t run into her on her own again since the stairwell. Just as well. He didn’t want anything to do with her anyway. And he didn’t entirely trust himself to control himself around her all the time as it was, and certainly not now. After Coldfront, Miss Pauling had been very clear that another stunt like the one he’d pulled with the cleaver would come with consequences. As it was he’d gotten away with a slap on the wrist and a temporary pay dock, given that no actual harm had come to Pyro in the end as far as BLU was concerned.

Goddamn Pyro. And now here he was again, caught in a rut thinking about her. This was a joke.

Scout stared at the phone a little bit longer, then picked it up and dialed again.

And this time, it answered on the second ring. “Hello?” said a voice that was not Roger’s.

“Hey—hey, shit, Sidney, man, what’s up? I been callin’ you guys a bunch an’ I ain’t heard a peep, what gives?”

“… Sorry, who’s this?”

“Oh fer—Jeremiah, numbskull. Where you guys been, I know Roger said Henry was home but—”

“Aw, shit. Shit, that is you, ain’t it,” Sidney muttered. “Aw, dammit. _Shit_.”

He sounded groggy and worn, the croak in his voice more than just sleep. It made Scout’s stomach knot up. “Sid? What, what’s up?”

“Um.” Sidney had never been the most eloquent of the Owens. “I … there … dammit, I didn’t wanna be the one told you.”

“Tell me _what_?”

“It’s—it’s Roger, is what it is. He got—there was a real bad accident, J. Had this bitch of a storm, rainin’ so hard you couldn’t hardly see none, there was a car accident.”

Somewhere in the middle of this Scout’s mouth had gone dry. “But,” he said, “I mean, he’s—he’s okay. Right? … Sidney?”

 

* * *

 

Later, Scout wouldn’t remember the details of the conversation with his brother. He would keep only impressions and hazy ideas of saying goodbye, after he’d been given all Sidney knew and promising to call again soon. Now he hung up the phone, staring down at it stupidly, leaning heavy on the desk and not sure when he’d started doing that either. He felt about like he’d run a marathon, but without any runner’s high. His chest ached, his head spun relentless and one thought kept shouting down the rest: _not again, please, God, not again._

With a great gasp he turned and staggered out of the room.

Miss Pauling’s room was on the second floor with most everyone else’s, was the first thought he recognized having. He did not especially remember the walk back up there, but it seemed like he’d gotten in front of it awfully fast, even for him. And he didn’t realize how loud he’d been banging on the door until Miss Pauling pulled it open. “Okay, _okay_ , I am not deaf—oh. Scout?” She peered up at him over her glasses, taking him in. He tried not to think about what he probably looked like. “What is it?”

“I n—I need to talk t’you,” he said, and was unprepared for the raw scrape his voice became. “In, uh. I-in private, I mean. Right now.”

“… Alright. Okay. Come in. Shut the door.”

He did. As soon as the door was closed he found himself slumped back against it, every ounce of him trying to keep himself on his feet. He stared down at his cleats. “I, um. I got—I need to … get some time off. Go back home, like, now. I don’t, uh, I dunno for how long, exactly.”

She was still studying him. Around her he made vague note of her room: overcast with the weather, low-ceilinged, cramped. He couldn’t really make out her face with her back to the window; the light wasn’t on. “What for?”

“… Family emergency.”

“Oh,” she said, and hesitated. “I mean … mmm. I’d normally—I’d like to tell you yes, Scout, but with everything going on—”

“Miss Pauling, look, one’a my brothers might be dying,” he blurt out haggardly. “There was, I guess there was this real—real bad accident, an’ he’s in the hospital an’ they don’t know if he’s gonna make it, an‘—an’ Sidney was tellin’ me—” his voice cracked but he kept going, “I just—I’ve _got_ to go home.”

Finally he risked raising his head, only to find Miss Pauling staring at him, wide-eyed. She looked … uncomfortable, nervous maybe. He knew from experience she hadn’t ever been the best at anything personal; he knew for an absolute fact she’d never see him upset like this before. Great. “Oh, Scout,” she said at last. “Oh, damn. I’m so sorry. Yes. Okay. Um, I’ll talk to the Administrator and Mr. Hale. Right away.” He blinked blearily as she turned to start fumbling through a little canvas bag he hadn’t noticed sitting on the lone chair before now. She pulled out something he thought might be one of those cellular phones, only smaller, and then stopped to look him over again. Re-evaluating him. He knew that look. “Um. Are you okay?”

Scout just looked at her. He felt too heavy, dead. When he lifted his hand to wipe at his stinging eyes it was like it was made of lead.

He heard Pauling curse softly and pick up her cell phone.

 

* * *

 

It seemed like hours began to drag by. He couldn’t really tell, and there wasn’t a clock in the room. Miss Pauling didn’t send him out, and he wasn’t sure if he wished she would. He wasn’t sure what he wanted at all, except to be back at home. Lacking the option, he just listened to Miss Pauling talk. Or tried, really. He couldn’t focus on the words.

Miss Pauling had a direct line to the Administrator, the iron-voiced woman Scout only knew as a voice on a speaker and sometimes a sharp, calculating face on a tiny television screen. Now Scout caught bits and pieces of her through the phone. There was a series of short, sharp points in the discussion, during which Miss Pauling dropped her voice several times. Sometimes there was silence. Once Miss Pauling pushed her hand up under her glasses to rub at her eyes, a mannerism he’d never seen her do before. When she at last hung up, the click of the phone cutting out stirred him more than anything else. “Okay,” Miss Pauling said, shaking herself. “All right. I did the best I could, Scout.”

 _The best I could._ Scout’s heart lurched. “What’s—best y’could, what’s that mean?”

“You can leave in a week.” When she looked at him again it took him a moment to place her expression as her attempt at looking apologetic. “It was the best I could get for you. The Administrator, she’s—uh, well. She thinks we’ll be done here by then. That’s what the intel says, at least.”

“A … a week.”

“I—”

“A week’a, of what, sittin’ around while my brother’s out there maybe takin’ his last goddamn breath, is that what that means? I ain’t even any good against these freakin’ things, I can’t do shit on ‘em by myself an’ the team they d, don’t need me for this they don’t want me ‘round no more anyway, a _week_? While I’m out here doin’, f-fuckin‘, God-knows-what, killin’ tin can’s, maybe wind up like _Spy_ too, out in the middle’a _God-damn Colorado_?”

“Scout,” Miss Pauling said.

“I already—! I can’t, I can’t not at least say g’bye to ’im, Miss Pauling, I _can’t_ , not—not again—”

“ _Scout._ ”

He cut himself off. His voice was cracking badly, his head pounded worse than ever, his eyes burned. He was making an idiot of himself.

Miss Pauling was watching him.

Scout turned to fumble with the door handle before he could make things worse. As he did he heard the floor creak. Something had grabbed his sleeve. “Hey,” Miss Pauling said, in a carefully neutral, measured tone. “Don’t storm off. You’re upset, you’re scared. It’s okay.”

“The hell d’you know about ‘okay’,” he muttered before he could catch himself. Guilt flashed through him. “I mean—I—” _Fuck._

He pulled open the door and ran.

 

* * *

 

It was raining again and Scout realized he’d just run all the way out to Sawmill. Distant thunder interrupted his shallow panting, and he was wet. That was fine. It had always rained more days than it didn’t at Sawmill, and the familiarity was comforting if nothing else. He stood at the edge of the old base for a minute or two, waiting for his disorientation to pass. It never did.

Then he was wandering through it, not really trying to collect his thoughts. They just bounced through him, sharp and painful.

He’d just made an absolute idiot of himself. Yelled at his boss, his _crush_ , too, running off like a kid. Like he used to all the time, like he did after Tobias—and now Roger—

Every new thought was instantly replaced by something worse, ricocheting wildly through his head as he moved through the old battlefield. Some of the first maps he’d ever drawn for the team had been for this place, he remembered distantly, way back when the idiots didn’t have a damn clue how to use a map proper. Back when they’d all for sure thought he was just some damn kid, back before he’d earned their respect. Soon he found himself picking through RED’s respawn building, somewhere he’d never stepped foot in before. It was a lot like BLU’s, just older and more worn-down, full of musty hay bales and dusty farming tools in corners. The rain pattered on the cement outside, soft. Water rolled down into his eyes from his hair and he pawed it away before dropping down onto one of the hay bales, head in hands.

He tried to focus on the sound of the rain, on his breathing. The stuff his brother Henry had told him to do when he started getting too angry. Henry was always shoving his psychology degree in people’s faces, the one he’d gotten on account of that free ride to college, on account of being too damn smart. Scout hadn’t ever held it too much against him, not really. And maybe he should’ve been listening to what Henry had been trying to tell him, because he sort of thought he was only doing it half-right. He was still trying when a voice interrupted him. “Scout?”

Scout flinched, and hard. He looked up. There was no one there, or there wasn’t until Miss Pauling stepped in through the far door.

Oh. Aw, shit.

Scout swiped at his face again. “Uh—hey,” he started hoarsely. “Did … did you—”

“Follow you? Yes.” Miss Pauling stopped to undo her chignon, wringing out her hair. He must have left a hell of a trail if she’d tracked him down. Not that she wasn’t a good tracker, but. Now she was wiping her hands on her skirt, and sighed. “You probably want to be left alone, I’m sure, but sometimes people do stupid things when they’re upset.” She paused, looking around. “Things like running off-base in the middle of a robot invasion.”

“So, what, so y’just came to yell at me. Okay, great, thanks.”

Pauling blinked, drawing her hands up to her chest. “Oh—damn, no. That’s not how I meant to say that—”

“They maybe you oughta _say_ whatever it is y’—”

“ _Scout._ ”

Scout shut up. Miss Pauling reached up again, rubbed at her eyes under her glasses before putting her hair into a loose ponytail. “I’m not good at comforting people. I know you know that, about me. What I meant was that I wanted to make sure you were okay.” She paused, fidgeting. “Can I sit down?”

“… yeah. Yeah, sure, sure.” Scout swallowed. “M’sorry. I didn’t, I mean, I shouldn’t’a snapped.”

“It’s fine,” she said, and Scout believed her.

He made room for her on the hay bale, and for a while they just sat there, listening to the rain. Scout still wasn’t sure if he really wanted company, even hers, but at the very least she’d distracted him from the echo chamber of his own head. And presently she asked, ’Would talking about anything help?"

Scout looked over at her, meeting her eyes by accident. She was sitting very still, with her hands on her knees. It was an intent look, almost too intent. Miss Pauling was a strange, intense girl. “I dunno,” Scout said at last, and looked away. Meeting that gaze too long was like staring at the sun. “I just … it’s, um. Ain’t ever told you much ’bout my brothers, huh. It’s, it’s Roger, it’s him that got hurt.”

“Is he the one with the glasses?”

“What? Uh. Yeah. Yeah, he is, how much d’you already know … ?”

“Just which one is which, mostly. We keep an eye on families, or we used to.” She shrugged. “Not a lot of resources left for that anymore.”

“… well, uh. Roger got, my brother Sidney he picked up the phone when I called an’ he just, that’s what all he told me. There was a real bad accident, car wreck, he … he didn’t give me a lotta details, just kept sayin’ it was bad. Real bad. The other guy died. Sidney said, um, said … the cars caught fire, that they blew up, about. He got, I guess he got—burns. Roger, I mean. Bad burns, an’ jus’ a lotta other shit, I …”

It was rare that Scout found himself at a loss for words, but just like that he’d run out of them. He stared off out the doorway, into the gloom of the clouds, and pulled off his hat to push a hand through his hair. Through it all Miss Pauling listened silently. “He didn’t … he said he didn’t wanna tell me about that. About the burns. Because’a … I just. I don’t know why this keeps happenin’ to me.”

“What does?”

“I ain’t done … I mean I ain’t no saint, shit, I mean I am real screwed up if I’m bein’ honest but I—I ain’t done nothin’ deserves, deserves _half_ the shit I been put through—”

When Miss Pauling asked a question, she did not let go of it. “Scout, what keeps happening?”

“This kind of _shit!_ ” he burst out. “God _damn!_ First Toby an’ now Rogers, _burns_ , Sidney said, and, an’ the whole damn team they think I’m a psychopath on account’a—I mean what would _they_ have done, even, huh? Gettin’ told they been workin’ with someone what _murdered_ their brother, been workin’ with ‘em for _years_? I—they don’t got a clue—they ain’t none of ‘em saw him, Miss Pauling.“ His eyes had started to sting, and his voice was going wrong, breaking and hitting odd pitches. ”My brother. Tobias. The one _she_ killed. It was just me was at home when they called, I hadta go fuckin’ _identify_ him. Got lucky they found out who he was at all, his wallet still on him, she left _that_. Half his face was just _gone_ , that’s my last goddamn memory of him, lookin’ at this … this thing they’re tellin’ me was my brother. An’ it was _her_ killed him an’ disappeared an’ then she comes wrecks the whole team, her an’ Engie, _fuck_. And—and now Roger’s maybe dyin’ an’ I’m stuck here an’ I c-can’t go for a _week_ an’ I might not—” He took a great gulp of air. “I _can’t_ not get to say goodbye, not again. Oh my God. Not again.”

He was not crying. Scout didn’t cry. But his head ached hideously, and his eyes felt like there was a tremendous pressure behind them, and by the time he’d finished speaking any control he’d had over his voice had vanished. Every breath hitched. With a last half-snarled cry he flung his hat to the dusty floor and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes.

Next to him, Miss Pauling was still perfectly quiet.

The rain fell.

“I never had any siblings,” said Miss Pauling, though it took him a moment to realize it was her. “But my mother passed on a few years ago, and I didn’t get to say goodbye to her either. I was out with my first mission with the RED team. It took a week and a half. She had a seizure and died two days before I got back.”

“… m’sorry.”

“Thank you. But I just mean to say I know a little how you feel, I think. About that part, anyway.” A quiet sigh. “It really isn’t fair for you. All those things you said. I’m sorry they happened.”

It seemed to take him a long time to wrap his head around her words. It seemed like it had been a long time since anyone had said anything like that to him.

A small, warm thing came to rest on his knee. Her hand, he realized dimly, and lifted his head to blink down at it. Something slow and painful felt like it was boring through his skull. “Th … thanks.” He was still looking at her hand and didn’t dare touch it. “I don’t … just. Thanks.”

In the corner of his eye he saw her nod. Then she pulled her hand away, laying it neatly in her lap. “It’s just one week, okay? I’ve got your file. I know how tough you and your brothers are. He’ll make it.”

Scout shrugged, rubbing at his eyes. Before he could say anything, she had stood, offering him her hand again. Scout stared at it stupidly again, until she said, “Come on, we should go. I’m not sure how safe it is out here.”

“… Yeah.”

It felt like it was much more effort than it should have been, taking her hand and getting back on his feet, but he managed.


	13. 11: DON'T FORGET

* * *

 

 

  
  


 

 

* * *

 

 

 

She kept making the mistake of playing chess with Heavy. Pyro barely knew how to play chess, but she never liked to turn Heavy’s invitations down. Even when she was mercilessly throttled, which was most of the time, it gave her an excuse to talk to him. She always felt slightly uncomfortable initiating that; probably it had to do with the fact that it had been Heavy she had told everything to, back in Coldfront. There was just something strange about talking casually with him now.

But, at present, playing chess let her ignore the fact she’d forgotten about one of her teammates’ deaths. Her nightmares were intermittent more often than not these days, but for the last three nights Spy—and the thing that had killed him—had been the headlining feature. She didn’t like to think about it. “So,” she said, watching Heavy pick across the board, “I guess—I mean, did we win? No one’s said anything about another attack.”

He reached out and captured two of her pieces in one move. One of them was a knight, and she held back a scowl as he took hostage the little white piece. She liked that one. “No,” Heavy said. “I do not think so. If we had won, there would be no reason that we should stay here. But I also have heard nothing else. Catching that robot must have crippled them, I think. Your turn.”

“I guess so,” Pyro said, staring down at the board. Hell if she could remember how half the pieces were supposed to work. “Where is it, anyway?” she asked, making a move with her queen that she hoped was legal.

“The robot?”

“Yeah,” Pyro said, and immediately wished she hadn’t asked. She both did and did not want to see the machine. Not knowing where it was had been a great excuse to keep away from it.

Heavy said nothing at first, studying the board. In the silence Pyro found herself fiddling with the lens on her camera, sitting in her lap from where it hung off her shoulder by a belt she’d rigged to hold it with. Then he captured three more of her pieces and said, “Check.”

She looked at the board again. It took her a bit of squinting to realize first, what he’d meant, and second, what to do about it. In moving her queen she’d exposed her king, and now his rook and king were positioned to take it. She chewed her lip, looking her options over. Tentatively, she moved her queen again—not backwards, to where it had been before, but further out in defense of the king.

She had nearly lifted her hand off the piece when Heavy asked, “Are you certain?”

She froze, eyes fixed on the board. Doubt pulled at her. For a long few seconds she nearly returned the queen to its position. But at last, she heaved a sigh and let it remain where it was. “I’ve got to do something.”

Heavy had one of the best poker faces she’d ever seen. It was a bit of a shock when his expression unfurled into a grin. “Very good,” he said. “Your king is safe, and now I am made to defend myself. Ah! Foolish Heavy is mentoring his own downfall. He ought to surrender now.”

It was hard to bite back the smile that wrestled its way onto her face; she stopped trying after a few seconds. “It’s luck.”

“I have been here in the world for nearly fifty years, and still I have not met this thing called luck.”

Pyro watched him looking at the board for another quiet few seconds, and then lifted up the camera to take a picture. His eyes darted up to her as the flash went off, but he said nothing in the short span of time it took for the camera to spit out the photo. She lay it on the table, put the camera back in her lap, and fished around in her jacket pockets for her pen. Only after she’d scribbled _luck?_ onto the blank space beneath the developing image did she even try to explain. “Sniper gave me his camera,” she said as she pulled the rubberbanded stack of photos she’d been collecting ever since that moment in the stairwell with Red out of another pocket. She added the newest one to it, not waiting for it to develop. “I’ve, um. I’m trying it out to see if it helps with my memory any.”

This made him lift his eyebrows, just for a moment, as if in understanding. That was all, and she was grateful that she did not have to explain further. Telling Red she’d forgotten Spy’s death had been bad enough. If she’d had to tell someone on her own _team_ …

“The basement.”

Pyro blinked. “What?”

“Your question. I am answering it. You will find the robot in the basement.”

 

* * *

 

The basement was colder than Pyro remembered. She hesitated at the foot of the stairs, unsure if she wanted to keep going or turn around. The lingering fascination to see the thing that had killed Spy, up close, felt more than a little morbid, and some small part of her couldn’t help but think she had done something like it in Boston, once. But in the end she pulled her jacket closer around her and set off, further into the darkness.

Heavy had said the door to the RED Engineer’s workshop was there if you turned around at once upon getting to the bottom of the stairs and followed a hallway tucked beneath them all the way to the end, and so it was. Light spilled into the black tunnel from the gap under the door, but when she knocked nothing happened. She waited for about thirty seconds, picking at the strap of her camera. Then she knocked again. And a third time. She had a distinct feeling that Dell had not liked to be walked in on when he was working, or at the very least she had the impression that his workshop doors had almost always been locked. The RED Engineer was bad-tempered enough that she didn’t want to risk trying the handle.

After the third time she heard a thud and a curse, and seconds later the door was yanked open. “ _What?_ ” barked the Engineer.

“Shit, relax,” Pyro said, leaning backwards.

“Huh! _Relax_ , she says, how’m I s’posed to _relax_ if I damn well got people makin’ me jump up to the door every half-hour, that’s what I’d like t’know,” the Engineer said. He was all contempt, glaring up at her through his goggles. He was even shorter than Dell. “Well, Scarface? The hell is so damn important?”

“If you keep calling me that I’m going to take those goggles and make you eat them,” Pyro said stiffly. “I just heard you had the robot down here. I wanted to see it.”

The Engineer peered at her hard for another few seconds. Then he snorted and gestured her inside. “Fine. Don’t touch nothin’.”

To say the interior was cavernous was a damning understatement. It must have been where the bulk of the factory work was done, because it was larger than the cafeteria by a long shot and stuffed with still, frozen machines. Some of them were so large they reached the ceiling, which must have been at least thirty feet high. It was bright, at least, and clean, and all the walls she could see were riddled with anonymous doors.

The Engineer was making his way over to a cleared-out spot, at the center of which was what looked to Pyro like an old assembly line. The robot lay atop it, dark and oil-smeared. It seemed larger than ever, this close. There were still red-brown smears all along its foreleg. Pyro tried not to look at them as she took the machine in. “There it is,” the Engineer said. “Happy?”

“Thrilled. What’ve you been doing with it?”

“Hnn. Tinkerin‘, mainly. Don’t want to turn the damn thing back on by accident, got to be careful. I took off all the weapons I could find, not that it woulda helped that spy of yours any.“ Pyro grimaced, but wouldn’t have said anything even if the Engineer hadn’t kept going. ”I think I got a lead on startin’ it up in some kinda inactive mode. Wish I had a damn computer. Somethin’ outta Australia. I think that’s what this thing’s runnin’ on, Aussie code.”

“I don’t know anything about computers,” Pyro said, risking a step closer. The thing smelled like oil and sap. She wrinkled her nose at it and shook herself, and dared to touch the black grate over its face. “Have you figured anything out, then? About the satellite?”

The Engineer scowled at her. “What’re you now, intel?”

She lifted both eyebrows, raising her hands as if in surrender. The Engineer laughed, leaning on his knees. “Jesus, you pretty thing, you can’t take a joke, can ya? Shut that mouth of yours, I’ll show ya. Ain’t no one else on these damn teams ever cared to ask anyway.”

… Fine, sure, okay. Pyro tried not to roll her eyes as the Engineer turned back to the dog, shoving one of its legs aside to reveal an open panel. Long lengths of multicolored wires trailed out of it in disastrous-looking tangles, connecting to a fat black box that almost looked like a car battery. In turn, the box had another dozen cables slithering out of its sides, trailing off to an array of more weird-looking machines stowed under the assembly line. The Engineer shoved a few aside with his boot, crouched to fuss with the box, and crammed something deep into the recesses of the dog’s chassis.

A deep, familiar hum filled the air, horribly loud. Pyro resisted clapping her hands over her ears, but she couldn’t help but cringe. Only three engagements with the machines and that sound already made her gut bottom out. It was worse up close and isolated like this, bouncing off the walls and machines. The thrum of the motor made the assembly line wobble; she hoped it wouldn’t collapse.

The collection of lights on the dog’s caged face flashed on and then off again, blinking in what looked like a random pattern. It issued a series of shrill beeps before falling silent. Beneath it, the box whirred softly, its own set of lights flickering gently. Pyro stepped backwards, and the Engineer snorted. “Ain’t gonna hurtcha,” he said, smacking the chassis with the wrench Pyro hadn’t noticed he was holding. The clang didn’t do much for her nerves.

A moment later the lights on the dog’s face settled into a slow, steady blink. “There,” the Engineer said, distinctly proud. “Safe mode.”

It was definitely something. What, exactly, Pyro wasn’t completely sure of. But hell, she couldn’t even read, so what did she know. “What’s safe mode do?”

“Lets me poke around in it without it tryin’ to stab me, obviously.” The Engineer knelt, gesturing her over to the black box. “Now, I ain’t got one of them damn computers, but I managed to sorta, ehh, reverse-engineer a couple’a the machines ‘round here to get some readings off it. Not much, mind. Internal temperature, camera function. But I managed to jigger that satellite’a yours back on it.“ Pyro looked and found he indeed had. It was attached by a massive wad of duct tape. ”I’m gettin’ an idea of where it’s gettin’ its instructions from, too.”

Oh. _That_ was interesting news. “Really? Where?”

“Somewhere north an’ east of here. Up in them midwestern states, prob’ly, or Canada. That’s all I’ve got. Ain’t been too keen to run it long, don’t know if it’s still monitoring things or not. I’m sure whatever’s talkin’ to this thing knows we’ve got it, but I don’t like to give it more information than I got to. It’s too damn smart on its own as it is. So don’t go blabbin’ to it, hear?”

Absently Pyro nodded, watching the flashing lights. She’d started fiddling with her camera, and now she raised it and snapped a picture of the dog. The Engineer flinched as the bulb flashed. “What the hell’re you doin’?”

“What’s it look like?” Pyro shot back, pulling the photo from the camera as it popped out. “Taking a picture.”

“What the hell for?”

Pyro thought, for a whole three seconds, about telling him what she’d told Heavy. Maybe it was because he looked so much like Dell. But as the photo popped out and she added it to her collection, she just said, “For my scrapbook, dumbass.”

 

* * *

 

So far, no one else on either of the teams had questioned her as she’d gathered photos of other important things: the battlefield, the door of Miss Pauling’s room, Sawmill. Clarence, who looked enough like Scout that when they were in the same room together she sometimes got nervous, and he seemed to be avoiding her anyway. She’d written _safe?_ on his photo, then scribbled it out and replaced it with _not scout, not T._

Honestly, she didn’t know what use the photos would be to her anyway. But collecting them had felt better than doing nothing over the last few days. They gave her something to focus on and think about, and without that she knew she’d be all the more likely to forget something else.

The Engineer had laughed at her comeback and let her go without further heckling. On her way back up the stairs, she paused to see if the details on the photo had filled in yet, and found they had: in the photo the dog was a massive, ugly gray and blue thing, its bloodied foot clear on display along with the wires spilling out of it. The camera had gone off mid-blink, leaving a smear of light in the picture. She could just make out the Engineer’s hardhat on the edge of the frame. Digging out the pen from her pocket, she flattened the photo against the wall and at the bottom wrote: _killed Spy,_ and beneath that: _DON’T FORGET._

For all the good that would do her. Pyro glared down at it for a few seconds before stuffing both pen and photo into her pockets. For all the good any of them would do. If there was a way to keep her brain in check, God only knew she hadn’t found it yet. With the way her life was going she could well never find it.

Her mood sure had soured fast. That was happening a lot, too, and somewhere she was pretty sure she knew it was stress getting to her. She thought she used to be a lot harder to shake, even untouchable, but that was another Pyro from another lifetime. Even now she still wasn’t certain if it was Spy’s death or the fact she’d outright forgotten Spy’s death that had bothered her more. Probably the latter, she would eventually tell herself with a sense of guilt.

Red had called her forgetfulness a coping mechanism. Pyro was pretty sure it was just sheer cowardice. It brought with it the sickening question of if she was forgetting anyone else, which only served to drop her back into the dim memories of that blur of a year she’d spent between fleeing the scene of the fire and the revelation on the sniper tower. It was a terrible catch–22; she didn’t want to remember, but she couldn’t allow herself to forget. Not again.

She worried now, most of all, that she would forget that Dell was dead. Properly forget, the way she’d forgotten Tobias. It already seemed unreal most of the time, probably because she had not witnessed it. But she had seen the remains of the farmhouse when she’d gone to get Shep, utterly scorched to the ground, and while there she had battled with the lurking wish that she’d been able to watch that fire. At times she was certain she had dreamed up her encounter with Pauling at the graveyard, and three days before that, of having to flee the scene of the house with Shep at heel when someone recognized her. It was two hours after that before she realized why they must have known her, and that had just made her feel sick. Two years of Dell taking care of her idiot self; Pauling had told her he had appointed himself her overseer before Coldfront.

God. She just hoped, sometimes outright prayed to anyone who would care to listen, that she hadn’t lied to Pauling. That she hadn’t set the fire that killed him, because there wasn’t really a way she could know for sure, was there?

She’d been able to read his headstone, after she stole into the graveyard once everyone left. DELL JACOB CONAGHER. She hadn’t even known he’d had a middle name, she’d thought as she sat down with her back to the marker, and watched Shep lope around the overgrown grass.

And of course she couldn’t remember anything else she’d thought while she was there, either, despite having been there until the sun went down.

Pyro wondered what else she wasn’t remembering. As she did she realized the door to her and Soldier’s room had appeared in front of her. She stared at it, feeling the frustration and nervous energy thrash their way through her. The first pangs of a throb in her temples was starting to form as she went inside.


	14. 12: SORRY DOESN'T DO ANYTHING

* * *

 

 

  
  


 

 

* * *

 

 

 

**SEPTEMBER 15TH, 1971**

**8:56 AM**

The respawn room was cold and horribly bright. Pyro snapped her eyes shut in pain, unused to spawning without her mask. Reflexively she wound her thoughts back, groping for what had killed her.

Nothing came.

The nausea hit. Spawn sickness never really went away. Swallowing down the urge to vomit, she tried to sort out what she _could_ remember. Talking to the RED Engineer. Going to bed. The night before. She could not remember waking up.

Her thoughts were interrupted when she realized Red was sitting outside the glass respawn doors. Watching her.

They must have been waiting for her. They got to their feet as soon as their eyes met, picking idly at the cuticles of their left hand as Pyro delayed actually stepping out from the spawn chamber. Like most of the team Red too had switched to street clothes in the break in the fighting, and today they were wearing loose, patchy overalls and a collared white shirt that had the sleeves cuffed at the elbows. Pyro could see swaths of old burns arching out from under the fabric, interrupting the freckles on their forearms. For some reason this made her feel worse.

She finally forced herself forward, returning Red’s simple _hey, Blue_ with a stiff nod. “Waiting for someone?”

Red laughed. It was breathy and awkward. “Yeah, I guess. It’s just—well, I was in the hall and I saw you go into the weaponry room, and …”

“ _What?_ ”

Red put their hands up in defense. “I … heard a gunshot right after that. And I found you, when I—you know. You, uh, you shot yourself.” Their hands dropped, and they shifted their weight as Pyro pawed at one eye and tried to stave off her mounting tension. “I was just wondering if you were okay.”

“I’m fine.”

“Oh,” Red said, and looked unconvinced. “Sure.”

“Sure,” Pyro echoed, and tried to get past them. Red made no move to stop her, and she had nearly escaped when they called out.

“I’m here if you need to talk.”

Pyro stopped in her tracks and looked over her shoulder. Just for a moment, just long enough for their gazes to meet. The look of concern on Red’s face put a foul taste in her mouth. “Just,” they went on, a little lamely. “If you want.”

“Yeah,” Pyro said, because she wasn’t sure what else to say. “Uh, th–thanks. Yeah.”

The door clicked shut behind her.

It was only in the hallway that she realized she was fully dressed, jacket and all. She even had her camera on her. So probably Red hadn’t been lying about seeing her, before. She shoved the rising nervousness to the back of her mind and fished through her pockets for the photos instead.

There they were, all still in a bundle. Twenty-six, same as last night. It would have been nice if she could have bothered to take a picture of whatever the hell it was that had made her kill herself. If she had killed herself.

She didn’t like to think about why she might have killed herself. The time skips were bad enough as it was.

Nevertheless, it stuck in her head for the rest of the day, like a piece of popcorn kernel lodged in her gums. It wasn’t a great day, she kept losing time. Just bits and pieces, here and there, parts of her short-term memory flaking off into nothing. Mostly it was all unimportant, or she hoped so. The walk from respawn to the cafeteria, how many flares she’d shot off for target practice after lunch, whether she or Sniper had won in their checkers game that afternoon. Tiny, niggling things. Together they grew and grew, a house of cards looming high over her head, just waiting for something to collapse them.

The worst one was a gap of maybe half an hour, around three o’clock. One moment she had been thinking about giving the day up for lost and trying to sleep everything off, and in the next she had just broken the lead off of a pencil she was sharpening in a room she was fairly sure she had never been in before. Startled, still frozen with her hand on the sharpener’s crank, she looked around. It was a small, green room, maybe an old office. It had some filing cabinets and a chair, and a desk, and a black telephone sitting on the desk. The sharpener she was using was mounted on the wall next to the phone.

She had absolutely no idea what she was doing sharpening a pencil in there. Swearing softly, she put the now leadless pencil down and pulled out her photos from her breast pocket.

Twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six.

Pyro slowly exhaled and put them back in her pocket. She shook herself and grabbed the pencil, stuffing it into one of the jacket’s hidden interior pockets, only for it to get stuck on something. When she looked to see what it was, she found something thin and small and with a white border.

She pulled out the twenty-seventh photo. It was entirely unfamiliar, a bad, blurry shot of someone walking away from the camera. They were halfway out of the frame, leaving a huge gap of blank wall at their side. The caption beneath it, a single word, had been reduced to smeared blue ink. Reflexively, she checked her hands, but there were no signs of ink on them.

She wondered how long the photo had been there. It was unpleasant, witnessing her system falling apart already. Her head hurt.

 

* * *

 

 

**SEPTEMBER 15TH, 1971**

**5:32 PM**

 

The weaponry room was windowless and quiet and for some reason Pyro had decided it would be a good place to try and calm down, to try and stop obsessing over the twenty-seventh photo. Maybe it would have been, if she hadn’t tried cleaning her flare gun to get her mind off things. Cleaning the flare gun was frustrating on the best of days, with all its tiny plastic parts. And it had been misfiring, when she had taken it out to practice earlier. There was a big dent in the side that she hadn’t noticed before. So she had disassembled it and cleaned it and reassembled it, and fired it into a metal bucket Soldier had been keeping his guns in to test it twice now, and both times it still went off wrong.

So now she was taking it apart again, sitting cross-legged on the floor. Her fingers were sore from messing with the stupid thing, and she was getting hungry, and this time when she dropped one of the screws and it went bouncing off to roll down an air vent on the floor about ten feet away, she swore and just shoved it all aside.

And then she laid all her photographs out again. Why the hell not.

Of course the door swung open as soon as she was finished, because that was her luck. And she probably would have been short with anyone no matter who had walked through the damn door, by then. The fact that it happened to be Red was sheer bad luck.

“Oh—hey,” was all they said. Pyro just grunted, looking back down at her photos. At her mystery photo, which still made no sense, and had done nothing for her apart from probably worsen her headache.

Maybe Red would take the hint. They stepped carefully past her, going past her to rifle through something on one of the tables. She tried not to hear them. It was going great until they came back, holding what looked like a bag of candy. Pyro had eaten all the candy she’d brought with her days ago; she didn’t realize she was staring at it until they glanced at it too and said, “Want some?”

Pyro flinched. Red laughed, not unkindly, as she tried to piece herself back together. “Um. Yeah. Yeah, sure. Please.”

“They’re those little strawberry hard candies,” they said, reaching inside. They were wrapped in shiny red and green plastic, dotted with printed seeds, and Pyro was not expecting how many of them Red put in her hands. “They’re my favorite. I’ve got to hide the bag, else I wind up eating it all in a day.”

Pyro nodded, stashing all but one in another of the jacket’s many pockets. She even remembered to thank them before she unwrapped the one she’d left out and popped it into her mouth. The syrupy artificial fruit taste was mollifying, and possibly was the best thing that had happened to her today.

She was thinking about that, and how it was almost funny, when Red craned their neck to get a better look at the pictures still lying on the ground. “Are these the photos you’ve been taking?”

“Hm? Oh. Those.” The wave of self-consciousness that overtook her was unexpected. She hesitated. “Yeah. Just … you know. Something to do.”

Red nodded, still looking. Pyro felt certain they were lingering on the twenty-seventh one, with its strange picture and blurred caption, and kept bracing herself to make up an answer about it. But in the end Red said nothing. Not about the photos, at least. “I wanted to tell you, too,” they said eventually, “That I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable this morning.”

It was unexpected enough that the silence that stretched on after they said it became distinctly painful. “It’s fine,” Pyro got out at last, reaching out to scoop up the photos before they could wear on her further.

“It’s only that I didn’t realize—well. My team doesn’t use respawn unless it’s necessary,” they said, shifting their weight. Pyro got to her feet. “But I guess your Sniper respawned this morning too, for a hangover. The last time someone on my team did it was Spy, and he’d gotten bit by a coral snake. Medic was gone for the day.” They paused. “And he didn’t want ask Eng about a dispenser, because—well, you’ve _met_ Eng.”

“Engineer?”

“Yeah.”

“My team respawns over splinters.”

“Guess that’s how it goes,” Red laughed. It trickled off, and the two of them were left in silence. Another of those awkward silences. “Oh,” they said after a moment. “That reminds me, I wanted to ask. Your engineer—did he quit? It’s just I always sort of thought you two were friends.”

Pyro, who had been wrestling another strawberry candy out of its wrapping, glanced up at them. She finished unwrapping it and stared down at it in her palm for a few seconds after. It was suddenly unappetizing. “No. He died.”

“… Oh,” she heard Red say, so softly she almost missed it.

“There was a fire. I guess. Earlier this year. After, uh. Coldfront.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, well. Sorry doesn’t do anything.”

It was a automatic remark. It took her until she’d forced herself to try and eat the damn candy to realize Red was staring at her, and their expression was nothing short of incredulous. “What?”

“… I said sorry doesn’t do anything.”

Now she wasn’t sure what the look Red was giving her was. She didn’t like it. “God, Blue,” they said eventually. “That’s just an awful way to look at things.”

Pyro felt her temper flare. What the hell had sorry ever done for her? Dell being sorry hadn’t fixed her brain damage. Scout had never given a damn that she was sorry about his brother. And being sorry had never, ever brought anyone back from the dead. “I’m not looking for pity,” she ground out. “I don’t need any more of that, thanks.”

“Pity?” Red echoed. “But that’s not even close to the same thing.”

If it had been another day—if her temples were not still throbbing with tension, if she had not had to focus the entirety of her energy that day on keeping her unsteady mind together—she thought she might have been able to keep the thread of the conversation. She might have been able to do something other than push herself upright and stalk out of the room, her head spinning with a dozen reasons why Red was wrong and unable to articulate any of them.

But as it happened, that was all she did. And she slammed the door shut behind her.

 

* * *

 

 

**SEPTEMBER 15TH, 1971**

**5:4? PM**

 

Surprise, surprise. Now Pyro felt worse.

Guilt had snapped at her heels as she’d stalked the horrible long halls. Goddamn halls were everywhere, none of them led anywhere, she was so _sick_ of Mannworks. She did not dare touch her pictures again. Part of her wanted to dump both them and the camera in the middle of the floor and leave it for someone else to deal with.

The next time she inhaled she was startled by the cold, earthy bite to the air. She was outside. Again.

This was getting old.

This time she’d come out on the opposite side of the building. The front entrance to Mannworks had little of interest to look at, just a long expanse of pine trees and the worn dirt road that the team had arrived by. A handful of crates and barrels sat near the door. With a resigned sort of groan, Pyro went and sat on one of them, drawing up her knees to press her forehead against them.

She had to calm down. Deep, careful breaths—no, that only made her headache worse. Squinting up over her knees, she tried taking inventory of the area, but she kept losing count of how many trees there were.

She wished she hadn’t snapped at Red. She wished she had the sense to take help when it was offered. God only knew she needed it.

And she was just thinking about going to try and find Red and apologize (which would be a bitter irony indeed, she realized with a wince), when the last person in the world she wanted to see came loping down the road from the forest.

Pyro felt herself grimace, her fingertips digging into her calves as she watched Scout pause on the road, panting. He must have been out running. As quietly as she could, she slid off the crate and made for the door. Maybe he wouldn’t have seen her. Maybe he would leave her alone.

When she stepped back into the building it was dark.

She stopped in the doorway, staring uncertainly into the darkness. There weren’t any windows on this side of the building for whatever reason, and the only illumination was what sunlight spilled past her to reach inside. Why were the lights off? Had they burned out? Had they even been on, before? There was no way for her to know.

The air, she noticed a few seconds later, was perfumed with smoke. She was given no time to dwell on it before:

“Would it kill ya to get outta the freakin’ way?”

Stiffly, Pyro turned to find a black silhouette. The sun was at its back, and its edges were fuzzy, and it was, she knew, taller than she knew Scout to be. She forced herself to look at it. “… Sorry.”

That should have been the end of it. Scout should have sneered or snapped at her and shoved his way past to disappear into the building. But instead he just stood there, both hands on the doorframe, glaring down at her. She wished she knew the right words to make him go away forever. “Sorry nothin‘,“ he said at last, all flat, ugly syllables. ”The hell’s sorry ever done for me, huh? Comin’ from _you_?” He laughed and that was ugly, too. “Sorry doesn’t do jack shit, does it, firebug?”

Of course her own words would manage to come back to haunt her. Everything else did. The words stung, but she forced her way past them. “Shut up,” she said, meeting his eyes. They burned like sunspots, impossibly bright, and she used that to brace herself. They weren’t really there. It was Scout, it was only Scout and would only ever be Scout. She was looking somewhere above where she knew Scout’s head was just to meet the illusion’s gaze. It had been so damn long since she’d had such a vivid, present hallucination—she wasn’t going to let one ruin her now.

She matched its stare a moment longer, and then, on impulse, lifted up her camera and snapped a picture. The thing that wasn’t there winced at the flash, just a little. The light caught the dog tags hanging around his neck. “You’re not him,” Pyro said, still on edge but allowing herself a moment of pride for getting the better of him. The camera whirred as it ejected the photo. “I know what you’re doing. You’re not him, and you don’t get to call me that.”

For a few seconds there was only the faint sound of the wind rustling through the pine trees. Then the thing in front of her smiled, broad, a hockey-player smile. “What’re you talkin’ about, doll? Don’tcha recognize me?”

The little bit of pride she had been tending vanished like a candle being put out. Pyro felt herself tense. “Don’t—don’t you dare.”

“Aw, c’mon, _firebug_ , that ain’t no way to talk to a guy, is it?” he said, leaning forward, uncomfortably close. Pyro stood her ground, even when he reached out and grabbed the picture from the camera. “I thought was was friends, ain’t we? Don’t be like that.”

She grit her teeth. “Scout, I mean it—”

“ _So do I!_ ” snarled Tobias, and he was suddenly, horribly real.

 

 

Pyro ripped her eyes away, cringing. There was a laugh like a shotgun blast and then something had grabbed her by the chin, forcing her to look at him, all melted scalded flesh and blazing eyes. She cried out, trying to pull free, only to freeze with her hand around his wrist when he spoke. “C’mon, what’s the matter?” he said with a smile. She knew that smile. It was the one that never reached his eyes. “You look like you saw a _ghost_.”

She ripped his hand away, nails digging in as hard as she could drive them. He flinched and swore, and it was enough to let her turn and bolt off into the black hallway, gasping, every second expecting to hear pounding footsteps after her. Those never came, but somehow the vicious laughter that did seemed worse.

 

* * *

 

**SEPTEMBER 15TH, 1971**

**6:?? PM**

 

Hallways. Hallways hallways hallways. Why were there so many stupid hallways and doors and why was this awful place so _big_? Pyro had no idea where she was, or had meant to go. She had simply needed to get _away._

That, at least, she seemed to have going for her. There was no one in sight as she wandered the factory. It allowed her to try and recollect herself.

She kept forgetting what it was she had been running from. Scout. Scout being cruel and trying to trick her. She could remember it if she tried hard enough. She’d even done something to make sure she’d remember—but she was having a hard time remembering what that was, too.

“ _Think_ ,” she muttered aloud, and hearing her own voice seemed to help a little. She needed to do … something. Over her loomed the ugly sensation of danger. Danger, right. She had to tell someone, warn them that she was having trouble remembering. That was what Demoman had told her to do when she felt the world starting to slip away from her.

Except she didn’t know where Demoman was. And it even seemed like there was someone more important she should tell, but she couldn’t remember who that might be.

Was it—was it Dell? No. She shook herself savagely, stopping to press her aching head against the cool glass of a window overlooking the forest. She couldn’t Dell, because … she couldn’t remember that either. But she was certain she was right about not being able to tell him. She would have to find someone else.

“… Miss Pauling.” Her own voice caught her by surprise this time, but before she knew it she had pushed off the wall to veer left toward a stairwell. That was right. That made sense. Miss Pauling would want to know, _needed_ to know if Pyro was losing it. Pauling was on the second floor, she thought, or would be sooner or later. Hopefully.

Up she went. As she rounded one set of stairs her camera strap snagged on the handrail. She nearly stumbled, caught herself, and remembered abruptly that she’d taken a picture of the ghost. Of Scout.

Scout.

As she made her way up the stairs and into the second floor she fished out her photos, flipping through them for the new picture. She could remember the flash going off with perfect clarity, and the sound the camera had made as it spat out the picture. She had absolutely taken a picture.

Except, when she looked through the stack, she couldn’t find it. She stopped in the middle of the hallway and went through them again, just to be sure. How many had she had before this? Twenty … twenty something? Twenty-six? She counted them aloud to herself as she went through them a third time, and came up with twenty-seven. The twenty-seventh was a blur, with someone halfway out of frame, somewhere in one of Mannworks’ stupid endless halls. They might have been Scout. She couldn’t read the caption. She couldn’t read any of the captions.

Hadn’t she been outside when she’d taken the last picture?

There was an uncomfortable pressure against the backs of her eyes when she looked up again, blinking. The hall was empty, with nothing to differentiate from any other hall in the place except the way the sun cast shadows from the trees over it.

… What had she been doing? She’d known, just a moment ago. She glanced around, trying to find something to prompt her, remind her. Nothing came.

Slowly, she put the photos back in her breast pocket. Calm down. Calm down—

A shadow darted past the window, flashing across her face. Pyro jerked away as if burned, heart leaping, but when she looked outside nothing was there but a bird flitting skyward.

Pyro shook herself. She took a deep breath. She’d … been going to talk to someone. She’d been going to talk to—that was it.

She turned around and went back down the stairs, wondering why she’d been all the way up on the second floor if she’d been going to talk to Dell.

 

* * *

 

 

**SEPTEMBER 1?TH, 197?**

**6? PM?**

 

The basement was as cold as it had always been. Pyro barely noticed it as she turned at the end of the steps, making for the workshop. The hallway down to it was as dark as before, too. She stopped in front of the door, tried to collect herself, and knocked.

The seconds ticked by. No one answered.

She tried again, harder, and froze when the door eased away from her, apparently already open.

More than a little cautiously, she stepped inside. She was pretty sure she wasn’t supposed to be in here without Dell around, but he always locked his workshop when he wasn’t in it, so he must have been there. The lights were on, at least, even if she could not see him.

What she did see was the big heap of metal splayed out on an old assembly line. It looked familiar. The dog. That. The lights on its face were blinking. She’d taken a picture of it, hadn’t she? She could remember that. The system worked.

“Dell?” she called. No answer. She fidgeted with the charred edge of her jacket sleeve, waiting, but the silence remained. At the same time she wasn’t exactly eager to go nosing through the place on her own. It felt like a bad idea.

When nothing continued to happen, she wandered over to the dog. She watched it at first, uneasy, but it did nothing but blink at her. It was just a heap of metal, after all. Gingerly she reached out to touch the bars on its face. Its lights were blinking randomly: some were steady, some flickered constantly, others came and went unpredictably. “I thought if we caught you we’d win,” she mumbled to it.

The lights flashed on, unhearing.

Pyro let out her breath and rubbed at her eyes. “You’re smarter than the others, aren’t you? Machines aren’t supposed to be smart. That’s … that only happens in movies. What are you?” No answer. “… I bet Dell knows,” she told it. “I’ll ask him.”

The lights flashed on.

Something closed down around her arm.

Pyro twisted, reaching for an axe at her hip that wasn’t there. She fumbled, yanked herself free, and in the process slammed the small of her back into the metal edge of the assembly line. “Shit!”

“Yeah, you deserved that, too,” snapped someone. “What in God’s name d’you think you’re doin’ in here?”

A chill bit at her through the pain. She’d made him mad, the last time she’d made him mad he’d yelled at her and told her to get out, the time she didn’t like the cigarette. “I–I-I’m—”

“Bein’ a nosy bitch, is what,” he grumbled, and finally Pyro looked at his face.

It felt like her reaction took much too long to come to her, but it was a terrible shock. Maybe it was because of the similarities. The man speaking to her was short like Dell, and even sounded a little like him, and he didn’t have any hair, either. His goggles were pushed up onto his forehead, though. And she was almost certain Dell did not have one eye with a warped, misshapen pupil that stared in a completely different direction than the other one.

On instinct she shied away, cold all over. The man who was not Dell snorted, glaring. “Yeah, g’wan, stare. Ain’t nothin’ worse than what you’ve got.”

“N, no, I … you’re … you’re not Dell? You’re not, are you?”

His scowl deepened. “I ain’t what?”

Pyro swallowed, still staring. “You aren’t—oh, shit. Oh, no. Where’s—but he’s supposed to be here, he’s. He’s supposed to be here, where is he?” She had been _so sure_ — “Where is he? I have to—I’ve got to tell him—”

“Hey, hold your damn horses,” the man said. “What, you drunk? Who’s Dell?”

“Engineer!” she burst out. “Dell! Dell Conagher! He’s … I thought he …” Something was very wrong. “I—I have to go.”

She tried to get around him, to go back to the door and the darkness. He grabbed her arm, vice-like, and wouldn’t let go even when she pulled. “Wait,” he said, sharp. “You are damn weird enough as it is but this don’t seem right. What’s the matter with you?”

“What’s the matter with—” The sheer absurdity of the question struck her mid-sentence. She broke off into too-loud laughter, burying her face in her hands. She felt him let go of her arm, but it hardly mattered. She couldn’t stop laughing. He was trying to say something and she couldn’t hear any of it over her own noise, noise, _noise._

It was chance that when she lifted her head again that her eyes fell once more on the dog. The lights on its face were no longer flashing; instead they were all on, one steady, solid glow.

The laughter abruptly stopped.

In the next second she had rushed back into the hallway. Someone called after her, the man, maybe, or perhaps it was the dog, and she ran faster, out the workshop, down the hall, up the stairs. She stopped dead in the stairwell once she hit the first floor, panting, trying to figure out what had just happened.

She didn’t get the chance before she heard footsteps on the stairs behind her. She scrambled out through the stairwell door and into the factory hallway, taking the first turn she came to, and then the next, and another, until she was utterly lost and opening a strange door into a strange green room. No, not strange. She’d been here before. She couldn’t remember when.

It was a green room and it had filing cabinets and a chair and a desk and a black phone sitting on the desk. Light filtered in through half-shut blinds. It had a hand-crank pencil sharpener on the wall. She didn’t notice it as she scrambled over the desk to hide beneath it.

It was dark. It was quiet. Pyro shut her eyes and didn’t let herself think about anything.

It felt like she waited for a long time. It was long enough that whatever it was she had been afraid of—and now she couldn’t remember what it had been—must have passed, or it would have gotten her by now, right? She crawled out from under the table, pulled herself up to sit on the small wooden chair behind the desk, and stared at nothing for a few seconds.

Thinking was so difficult. It was like her brain was coated in molasses. She was maybe supposed to be doing something, or waiting for someone. It was a lot of things to be concerned with at the same time, and she wound up just sitting there, breathing. She stared at the black rotary telephone on the desk. It did nothing, until it rang.

Pyro flinched. It rang a second time, and she straightened up in her seat. Someone was calling. Was she supposed to answer? Was that what you did with phones? She had never owned a telephone. On the third ring she stopped fidgeting with her jacket. Maybe it was someone important. Maybe it was Dell.

This was the thought that spurred her to answer it. With a faltering hand, she reached out and took it in the middle of the fourth ring. It took her a moment to put it to her ear. “… Hello?”

Nothing. She wet her lips, suddenly thinking this was stupid. It was a bright, sharp moment of clarity and she tried to take hold of it, only to have it slip through her fingers a moment later. Damn it. She tried again. “Dell …?”

“Wrong dead man, firebug.”

The handset hit the desk with a bang. Pyro had nearly flung it across the room, lurching back as if burned.

Everything was quiet.

She picked up the handset again. Listened. She nearly hung up when the voice came again. “You really gonna hang up on me?”

And just like that the phone was back against her ear, pressing hard enough to hurt. “I told you—I told you I’m not talking to you anymore. I told you that.”

"Well you maybe oughta hang up the phone then, yeah?

“… What do you want?”

“Me? Nothin‘. Heck, I’m tryin’ to be nice, is all. Just I’m thinkin’ maybe you oughta be more careful.”

“Careful with what?”

“I mean, you don’t gotta listen to me. But you’re havin’ some problems, ain’tcha, or I figure you wouldn’t probably be talkin’ to me. You know?”

Pyro’s mouth had gone dry. “I don’t understand.”

“I know y’don’t, Pyro,” the voice said. “Sorry.”

And then the voice was gone. There was a dial tone humming loudly into her ear.

Pyro put the handset back in the cradle, clumsily, almost knocking the whole thing over. For a few seconds she just watched it, waiting to see if it would ring again. If it rang again maybe she could answer it better this time. Or maybe it would be Dell. The voice had said something about Dell. It had called her firebug.

But the phone didn’t ring again, and eventually Pyro got to her feet and stumbled out of the office.

 

* * *

 

**??? 19??**

**?:? ??**

  
****

She didn’t know how she got downstairs again, where it was cold and kind of dark and very quiet. Pyro liked that it was quiet at least because it was still really hard to think and maybe if it was quiet enough for long enough it would get easier. So it was okay that she was downstairs because maybe her thoughts would come back and maybe her head would stop hurting so much.

So far it wasn’t working, though.

The angry throb in each of her temples got worse if she moved her head, so now she was curled into a ball with her back to one of the big red boxes by the tracks, directly next to the big, black tunnel furthest from the stairs. There were lots of boxes and she had put herself between one of them and the edge of the tunnel, just before the railroad tracks running through the middle of the basement were swallowed up by darkness. Just sitting there. Breathing.

Eventually, she pulled out her photos again. It was dark enough that she could only just make out the white frames, let alone their contents. Twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven. Was that right? She wasn’t sure.

She had twenty-seven photos and a headache and an impending sense of doom. Shaking herself, she returned the pictures to her pocket, and in putting them back found a lighter in a different pocket. She pulled it out and looked it over in the dim light: just a scuffed Zippo. With a flick of her wrist it was on and blazing, and she put it down on the ground between her boots, staring at it.

Time passed.

A long, long, long time passed. She maybe fell asleep once, because one moment the lighter was burning and then it wasn’t, and it wouldn’t catch when she tried to restart it. The fuel was probably gone. Maybe she had fallen asleep. Maybe the world had fallen asleep around her and forgot she was still there. That happened sometimes.

It seemed darker than it had been before. Maybe that was why she heard it, or maybe that was why she’d stirred at all: a faint, hard stomping kind of sound, echoing down through the tunnel’s concrete walls.

She got to her feet, bracing herself against the shipping box. Her headache had started to fade. The sound remained, a far-off, rhythmic _thmp-thmp-thmp-thpm_ that seemed to be growing louder very quickly. It was everywhere. She couldn’t see anything. She pawed at her eyes and shook her head, to no avail.

Louder, louder. It sounded familiar, and once she realized that she got cold all over. There was a faint glow in the tunnel, now. The noise grew to a thunder.

Shivering, she stepped to the edge of the concrete platform, and peered down into the dark.

Hundreds of glowing lights peered back at her, growing closer every second.

She did not so much as cry out, she didn’t even know what she was doing, but now she was scrambling away, breath hitching and catching and turning into terrified whimpers as she bolted for the stairs. Gunfire split the perfect pattern of noise and bullets leapt off the ground around her and then she was on the ground, too, because one had caught her in the calf. She could barely hear her own shriek over the noise of the approaching machines.

Desperate, she forced herself upright, staggering toward the steps. Another shot clipped her shoulders. Her vision flickered. The stairs were so close, the machines were so close. When her sight came back there was someone in front of her, dragging her forward with calloused hands, toward the stairs, up the stairs. Kicking the stairwell door open. Screaming.

The last thing she would see as she was dragged off was the countless glowing lights staring back up at her.

 

* * *

 

* * *

 

* * *

 

 

**SEPTEMBER 15TH, 1971**

**8:13 AM**

 

 

It was morning and it was cold and it was the day after she’d taken the photo of the dog, and Pyro was standing perfectly still in the threshold of her and Soldier’s room. She had to be standing perfectly still, because she needed to think about her shotgun. It was a good, sturdy thing, her shotgun. It always smelled strongly of gunpowder, which she loved, and she had kept it distinct from Soldier’s and Heavy’s by putting one of those yellow smiley-face stickers on it. If she tried she could remember exactly what it looked like, stuck at a forty-five degree angle on the left barrel, yellow and black except where at some point one of its eyes had been torn off. Respawn had never fixed that.

It was, currently, extremely important that she be thinking about the shotgun and its sticker and all the pointless mundane details about it, because she had to think about _something_. Otherwise she was going to end up thinking about how there was a ghost going down the hall.

She had pulled open the door of her room just in time to see Clarence walking past her, with someone else at his side. At first she thought it was Sniper, because the someone was tall and narrow and sort of hunched. If it hadn’t been for her rotten luck she might have been able to pass it off at that, and forget about it. But she was Pyro, and her luck was a joke, and so of course the someone had looked over his shoulder. Just for a moment, just so that their gazes met and she could see that his eye had been blackened, and that his lip had been split in two places.

He hadn’t done anything else. Hadn’t said anything, hadn’t smiled or scowled. Just looked at her, once, and then looked away.

Without really knowing what she was doing, she had fumbled for her camera. The bulb flashed, the picture was spat out all too slowly. Her mind was not exactly racing, but it did seem to be moving about twice as fast as normal. She hadn’t had a proper hallucination in months. She couldn’t have one now, now of all times, not when there were things out there like the thing that had killed Spy.

The photo came out. There was a pen in her hand, and she was trying to write something down with it. She’d written something, but she couldn’t read it. She looked at the developing photo.

It occurred to Pyro, as she watched the blurry picture of Clarence in the hallway fade into view, that you could not taken photographs of things that were not really there.

A strangled kind of sound lodged itself in her throat. She smudged out the not-words on the caption with her fingertips, staining them blue.

She shoved the photo into one of the five-fucking-dozen pockets in her stupid jacket, and started thinking about her gun. She thought about it all the way down one of the five-fucking-dozen hallways, down the stairs, as she practically walked into someone. She might have talked to them. She didn’t know. She didn’t care. She was too busy thinking about her gun, right up until she walked into the weaponry room.

Her gun was sitting on one of the tables, next to her flare gun. She picked it up and it was heavier than she had expected it to be, even though it did not seem to have changed. It fell back down, square onto her flare gun, knocking a dent into the flare gun's barrel. She picked the shotgun up again and noticed that now she wasn’t thinking about much of anything. That was fine.

The gun was exactly the way she had remembered it, which was sort of comforting. It had the sticker and everything. It still smelled like gunpowder, and when she put the barrel in her mouth it tasted like it, too, and of metal and smoke and oil—but only for a moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guest art by [teafortteu.](http://teafortteu.tumblr.com/)


	15. ACT II: OCTOBER

"It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards," the Queen remarked.

— Lewis Carroll, “Through the Looking-Glass.”


	16. 13: DOWN THE RABBIT-HOLE

* * *

 

 

  
  


 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 **OCTOBER, 1971  
** **CHIPPEWA NATIONAL FOREST, MINNESOTA**

 

Miss Pauling had, at all times, a list. The list was vital. It had been vital at school and at TF Industries, and it was probably even moreso now than ever.

The contents changed from day to day. Usually it was a list of available resources, important to-do’s. Bills she had to pay, people she needed to kill. Everyday things. Sometimes it was written on paper; sometimes it was on blue ink on the inside of her right arm. Sometimes it wasn’t anywhere but in her head, which was just as useful if a little harder to visualize. This was its current location, as she picked another twig out of her hair and cast it to the forest floor. The upswing of this was that it was quite hard to _lose_ a mental list, unlike, say, her folders. The ones that had been left behind at Mannworks.

Mannworks. That was on her list, under the heading “HAD.” Directly next to it, beneath the word “HAVE,” was written “Greater Lake Superior Hat Refinery.”

At least, she thought they still had that, she thought pensively. No news had come over her little handheld radio, and presumably no news was good news, but it was hard to tell several dozen miles away in the middle of the woods.

Anyway. This seemed like a good enough system for her current situation. Miss Pauling decided to adopt it. HAD: Seventeen functional mercenaries. HAVE: Fifteen functional mercenaries—one dead, and one … well.

Miss Pauling cut her gaze across the small camp in the fading light. There were the RED Pyro and RED Scout together, light and dark shadows behind their tiny smokeless fire. Next to them the BLU Scout’s bag lay on the ground. The RED Spy was nowhere to be seen. And the BLU Pyro, herself, sat close to the fire and was only staring at it, unblinking.

Two and a half weeks ago, at about two in the morning, Pyro and Engineer had come tearing up out of the basement, screaming bloody murder with an entire platoon of robots behind them. It was a good thing they had, too, because otherwise it seemed very likely that the ambush would have succeeded. The machines had stormed up through the underground rail tunnel. It was dumb luck that the pair of them had been down there at all. As it was, the warning had been enough to get all of them out of the factory alive, fleeing in Sniper’s truck and a hot-wired Mannworks van. A semi-panicked call to the Administrator had them headed north to meet a private plane.

It took them two days to get to a safe location to regroup. This was stressful enough in itself. It got worse when the BLU Heavy pointed out that Pyro was walking in circles, talking softly to herself.

She regressed like that, sometimes; the whole BLU team knew it, and so did Pauling. But none of them had an explanation for why she had not yet returned to normal. “Never seen it last longer than a day, day an’ a half,” Tavish said when Pauling was getting the REDs up to speed on Pyro’s situation. Pyro herself was totally preoccupied on the ground a few feet away, scrawling on paper with a pen someone had produced. “Not since before Coldfront, I mean. A bloody great shock like that, though, I suppose it’s no surprise. Always was the stress what got to her.”

“What happened at Coldfront?” Red had asked. Tavish had grimaced, and suggested they try respawning Pyro. Pauling didn’t have any better ideas. It didn’t work.

And it had been Red, again, who came up to her in private. “Is she going to be alright?” they asked, a strange lilt in their voice. “I mean … back to normal? She was acting … different, last it was I spoke to her …”

Pauling had shrugged, glancing up at Red from where she was hastily sorting out maps that Scout and Soldier had drawn up for her, pointing out the likeliest points of attack at their new base. “She always has before. I probably should have warned you guys that this might happen. I guess I was hoping it wouldn’t.” Red went away after that, still looking bothered. Pauling had gone back to her maps. She really didn’t have time.

HAD: No idea where to go next. It had taken her three hours and two separate conferences with both Spy and Engineer to fix that. The Engineer had claimed to have acquired the coordinates of the signal broadcasting to the quadruped robot. The Spy supplied her with what she needed before she could even tell him that she needed it.

HAVE: Three possibilities:

1\. Continue defending Mann Co. properties, with a high projected failure rate,

2\. Withdraw entirely and look for a different tactic, allowing Grey Mann to capture and destroy as many objectives as he could in the meantime,

or,

3\. Kill the problem at its source.

She presented these options to the Administrator in a brief telecom rendezvous at approximately 1:30AM, that evening. By 2AM, she had her new orders. By 3AM, all seventeen of them were on the road to Minnesota.

They would continue holding ground, as before. “The rest of the team will,” Pauling clarified, looking up from her notes to the four mercs she had called into her makeshift office in the new factory the next day. “We have a different assignment. We’re going to try and find where the robots are being manufactured and shut it down.”

“‘We’?” Spy said, lifting one eyebrow.

“Yes. I’m coming along.”

“Y’are, how come?” Clarence piped up. Next to him, Red looked like they had the same question. “Thought you hadta, like, I dunno. Do reportin’ an’ stuff.”

“That’s exactly why I’m coming. We’re not going to engage the enemy, if we encounter it. This is strictly a recon job. The coordinates broadcasted by the robot we captured are located near a forest about eight hours out. We go in, we take some pictures, we get out. The rest of the team stays here. The six of us will be—”

“Six?” Scout said. Miss Pauling had been very carefully not looking at Scout up until this point. “Six, there’s just us five here.”

Pauling nodded, and looked back down at her maps. “Pyro is under my supervision until she recovers, so she’s coming along.”

She had expected maybe an outburst, or at least a snide remark. Scout, though, said nothing. Something about the lack on his part made her itch to make up for it, to fill the silence. “There’s a good chance she’ll recover before we go, or on our way there, and we’ll be that much stronger if she does.”

No one else objected. She gave them the rest of the details and told them they were dismissed, and very consciously did not watch them go. Perhaps she should have; perhaps she would have noticed Scout lingering at the door before he cleared his throat. Miss Pauling did not flinch, as a general rule, but that made her freeze. “… Scout,” she said, looking up. “Have, ah. There’s a phone here. Free long-distance. You should call your family. Find out about Roger.”

“… Yeah,” he said slowly. “Yeah, I should do that.” But he stayed where he was, as if deliberating. Finally he said, “I guess prob’ly all this means I ain’t gettin’ that time off, right?”

Pauling exhaled, slowly. “We really need you on this mission, Scout. These machines … there’s more at stake here than just us. I’m sorry.”

Silence. When she looked at him, she found him rubbing at his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, face shadowed under the brim of his hat. When he dropped his hand he was not looking at her, but off somewhere in the middle distance. Then he turned away. “Scout—”

“Miss P., don’t,” Scout said. “Just … don’t. I’ll—I’ll go an’ get packed up. Call home,” he added, bitter.

They set out the next day, before dawn. It was a mostly silent ride; even Pyro behaved herself. Eight hours and a dozen-some dirt roads later they reached their starting point: square against the massive Chippewa National Forest, old-growth, dense and imperial. A sigh caught Pauling by surprise as they hid the car. She had a feeling this was going to be hard.

The team grabbed their gear and headed into the woods full of dying autumn leaves.

And now they were here, some miles north and east into the woods as dusk began to fall. Scout had led the way, pointing out deer trails for them to follow, keeping them on the right paths, and he had taken point on setting up the camp as night came on, too. This was a relief; Pauling had never gone camping before. From where she sat now with her back to a skinny aspen, knees drawn up Pauling wondered how long they would be out here. She had rough maps and a GPS imported from Australia, and two weeks’ worth of rations for each of them. She had gone over her list in her head at least three times now, and nothing new was turning up. She wondered how Roger was doing.

“Miss Pauling?”

She looked up, over her shoulder, and found Scout. He stood with one hand picking at the peeling bark of the aspen, red-faced with the chilly air. “Hey,” she said, looking him over. “Did you find anything?”

“Yeah, more than I figured.” He dropped down next to her, leaning his elbows on his knees. “Tracks that weren’t made by no deer, no person neither, lots of em. Some trees ripped up, even. All’a it mostly goin’ north-northeast. There were some real damn big ones, too, like maybe another of those dog things made ‘em maybe. Didn’t look nothin’ like the titan prints anyway.” As he spoke he’d tugged something out of his jacket’s breast pocket—a rectangle of plastic, inset with a compass and hanging from an orange nylon cord. This he lay flat in his palm, and pointed in the direction she assumed north-northeast was. “The little ones kinda were all over, couldn’t get a good handle on where they was comin’ from. The big ones sorta went back over themselves sometimes.”

Big prints. That seemed a little odd. Pauling tucked it away in the back of her mind of later. “The direction sounds right, I think,” she said. “With what Engineer could tell me, anyway.”

“How far out you figure we are, d’you know?”

“He wasn’t able to get an exact location before the ambush, but he said it was northeast.”

“Northeast or north-northeast? They’re different things.”

Pauling had been about to answer, but she glanced out over the camp first, just in time to see Pyro make a grab for one of the sticks on the fire. Red intercepted her, saying something Pauling couldn’t make out as Pyro scowled. Not even a full day in and she was already regretting the fact she’d been required to take Pyro along. “… Ah. Well, I guess I don’t know. It should all be on the map. Did you find anything else?”

Scout was a moment in replying, and silence from him was odd enough to make her look back over at him. He was watching Pyro, too, though without the malice she was used to seeing from him. This expression lingered somewhere in the realm of exhaustion, of disgust. She said his name, quietly, to bring him back. “I, ah,” he started. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, I got most’a the way up a tree, got a good look ‘round the place. There’s a big river cuts straight north, probably we’re gonna hafta cross it sooner or later. I didn’t see no easy ways over just lookin’, though. Didja bring that raft along like I said?”

“Clarence should have it.”

“Cool. Anyway I saw a big old cliff on our side’a it, might worth stickin’ to that, I dunno. One less side for robots to sneak up on us. I dunno, I dunno from robots. Least ‘ways I didn’t actually see any of the bastards. What’s this place we’re lookin’ for look like anyway?”

“I’m not sure, just that it’s a one-story building. I think it’s near a body of water. It’s mostly underground, if our intel is right.”

Scout groaned. “Hell, underground. They just ain’t playin’ fair, are they, first them rail tunnels and now, what, bunkers. Soldier’d have a field day, bet you.” He shifted, too, sitting now with his legs sprawling out long before him.

They had been provided with gear and clothing by Mann Co., and despite the dubious nature of the company it was all quality stuff. Scout had been the one dictating what they should be bringing on a wilderness mission. Pauling had been rather impressed. It was easy, between his attitude and his antics, to forget that there was a reason he had been hired. Clarence has good at following orders and running; Scout was good at running, at least, but most of all he was good at scouting. Now her eyes fell on the compass again. It looked familiar. “Oh,” she began. “Isn’t that—that’s the same compass you had when I recruited you.”

Scout pulled his eyes away from the campfire to look first at her and then at the tiny compass still in his hand. “Hey, yeah, it is. Shoot. That seems like a real long time ago.”

“Only about four years.”

“My ma says every year counts double for time ‘til you’re thirty, an’ then they all count as half.”

She smiled, and lifted a hand as if to take the compass. Scout obliged; the plastic was warm from his skin. “Is it a special compass” she asked, turning it over. “I don’t really know much about your job apart from what I was told to look for when I was recruiting.”

“Yeah, well, ain’t really like I been doin’ tons’a what I thought I signed up for anyway,” Scout said. “Kinda it’s a special compass. Orienteerin’ compass. Mostly it’s just a compass, though. Hey,” and he grinned, “hey, I ever tell you the first thing I thought when I saw you?”

“No, what?”

 

 

* * *

 

 **NOVEMBER 6TH, 1967  
** **SOMEWHERE ON INTERSTATE 476, PENNSYLVANIA**

 

 _Shit,_ Jeremiah thought, _that girl’s got a gun._

That was what happened when you ran wild in the gutters of Boston: you learned to notice when someone was hiding a weapon. Particularly a gun. Knives, knuckledusters, that sort of thing, they were pretty bad, yeah, but you could come back from them most of the time. But a guy didn’t need to be anybody tough with a damn gun.

So. The girl he had casually sat down across from on the empty Greyhound was carrying a gun. Not in plain sight, of course not. Not on a _bus_. But he had been watching her out of the corner of his eye, and he’d seen her black skirt slide up just that little bit as she shifted in her seat, and he’d seen the black muzzle of a pistol plain as anything against her tights. He’d started looking at the back of the seat in front of him pretty quick after that. She was pretty, awful pretty to be sure, but not the kind of pretty he felt like getting shot over.

And anyway, he’d already decided buses were a stupid place to meet girls at.

It was fall and it was cold and it was in Pennsylvania. Jeremiah didn’t know anything about Pennsylvania, he’d just wound up here. He’d just wound up a lot of places in the last month and a half, mostly by hitchhiking, sometimes by bus or ferry or train. He didn’t have the money for a Greyhound ticket, he really didn’t, but he just wanted to get out of Valley Forge as quick as he could. Before he could do something he couldn’t take back.

So it was a fifteen-hour ride to Pittsburgh. Jeremiah had never sat in one spot for fifteen hours in his life, and he didn’t intend to start now; he’d probably wait until he couldn’t stand it anymore and just get off at whatever station they happened to stop off at next. But so far it had only been about half an hour, and no matter what his brothers said about him, he _could_ sit still when he wanted to.

It probably wasn’t like they said anything about him these days anyway. They’d quit talking about Tobias two weeks before Jeremiah had left; he didn’t know why his disappearance would be any different.

He tugged open the rucksack between his feet and rummaged around in it, fingers finding their way through hand-me-downs and stolen food until they found what they were looking for. A weathered yellow graph notebook and a dull Ticonderoga were pulled up to his lap, followed by the little hand-compass he’d gotten yesterday, and he scowled as a rumpled sheet of paper came up with them. He smoothed it out, scanned it, and then ripped it up. The bus window screeched as he forced it open, and the wind caught the pieces from his hands before he could even get them all the way out of the bus. Most of them burst out the window in a rush of white and orange confetti, but one twisted backwards and plastered itself to his cheek. Sputtering, he peeled it off and looked at it. FIRST ANNUAL ORIENTEERING EVENT, it read in blazing orange print. NOVEMBER 5, 1PM. $75 FIRST PRIZE!

The rest of the flyer was lost to the wind. Jeremiah tossed the scrap out to join them, still scowling. Seventy-five dollars. Seventy-five dollars that should have been his.

Whatever. He pulled the window shut again and returned to his notebook. His fingertips moved lightly over the pages already filled, over the smudged graphite of a hundred narrow, meticulous lines, tracing out rivers and roads, streets and suburbs. For a single moment quiet contemplation took him, ebbed through his nerves and veins, wound its way into his right arm and surged forward to bring the pencil to the next blank page.

One, two careful lines was all it took and he was off. Th pencil lead moved smooth and careful even on the moving bus, notching out a scale, marking due north, laying down where he’d stepped onto the bus some thirty miles back and how far away he was now. Lots of long, wavy lines. Highways would do that. It always took up so much room on the page; he much preferred the dense networks of blocks and alleys of cities.

“What’s that?”

Jeremiah started, the pencil driving too hard against the paper. He shook himself and looked up to see the girl with the gun standing beside him, watching him intently. The gun was nowhere in sight. He was not sure how much time had passed. “Uh,” he started, “it’s, it’s a map.”

The girl kept watching him. She had glass-green eyes and upswept glasses with black rims, with black hair gathered back into a chignon. Her blouse was lilac. “A map?”

“Yeah. S’the bus route.”

“What, this bus?” Jeremiah nodded. She looked down at the notebook, craning her neck to one side. “Didn’t you look at the route before? We’re going to Pittsburgh. I have a map if you want.”

“I mean, yeah, yeah I know. Just I’m drawin’ the route, see, it’s a map. There’s where we boarded, back in, what, back in Valley Forge, yeah? Prob’ly I’ll look at the route again when I get off, see how close I got.”

Now she was looking at him again. There was something a little unnerving about her, but he couldn’t place it. Maybe it was just because he knew she had a gun under her skirt. He made a mental note to try not to mention that. “Hang on,” she said, and went back to her seat. She returned a moment later with a pink brochure, unfolded. “This is the route. Let me see yours?”

He did, and was pleased to note as she compared the two of them that his was spot-on so far, if lacking a little detail. “S’just a hobby, y’know how it is,” he said, proud. “Passes the time, makin’ maps, an’ all. Useful too. Whole notebook’s full of ’em, you can look if you wanna, been at it since I was like six. I’m real good at it. Name’s Jeremiah, what’s yours?”

“Miss Pauling is fine. You drew all of these?” she asked, flipping through the pages. “Just out of your head?”

“Yeah! Toldja, I am real good. Better with a compass,” and he tapped the one he held, “but good either way. I can find anythin’, get anywhere, be the first guy there, too.”

“Can I sit down?”

As he scooted over and pulled his bag with him, it occurred to Jeremiah that he was trying and failing to bite back a grin. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d grinned about anything, not since July. It felt kind of wrong, but he couldn’t bring himself to try and quell it. “So, so like, what, you into cartography or whatever?” he asked as casually as he could while she examined each map. “Just, mostly people ain’t much into maps an’ knowin’ where stuff is and all. I mean until they wanna know how to get somewhere, then you can’t beat ‘em off with a stick, I got sev—I got, I got a bunch’a brothers was always hasslin’ me every day, wantin’ me to tell ’em crap.”

She smiled, and that was when it struck him that he’d been waiting for her to do so. She hadn’t smiled once until now, or had an expression that was anything other than intent observation. Even now it seemed—not forced, exactly, but nothing like the smile he was wearing. Measured. Miss Pauling, huh. “You could say that. I was actually up in Valley Forge for a kind of scouting event yesterday.”

“Heck, you mean that damn orienteerin’ thing?”

“That was it exactly. Were you there?”

Jeremiah snorted, slouching. “I _won_ the damn stupid thing. Finished first of any of ‘em, I swear. And y’know what they did, they said I freakin’ cheated, so I didn’t get jack.”

“Oh,” Miss Pauling said, “then you were the one who got into the fistfight with the judges.”

“… Yeah, uh. That, that was me alright. I mean he called me a cheater, I ain’t never cheated in my life. I don’t _need_ t’cheat.” He paused, cleared his throat. “So, so but what was you there for, were you competin’?”

She shook her head. “No, I was just there to watch. It was the first event of its kind in the States, lots of people like you turning up. Tell me about this map.”

Jeremiah followed her gaze down to where she’d stopped. IT was a creased, dirty set of pages, the lines set out in ink, with old names scratched out and rewritten as the years rolled and businesses rose and died. Dozens of tiny notes darkened the margins, in multiple inks and handwritings. He had last looked at it in the middle of June, trying to find a house outside of Southie and Boston proper. He had not done so again since. “Oh. Oh, that? That’s my neighborhood. Old neighborhood. Up in Boston, ‘round Southie. Me an’ my brothers, we used it all the time, we were always runnin’ around, gettin’ into trouble.”

“What do all these little marks mean?”

He told her, explained the legends and directions written in shorthand onto it. Then she asked about something else on the map, and then another, and Jeremiah was so wrapped up in explaining it to her that it almost did not occur to him that it was the first time in his life he’d ever explained one of his maps to someone he wasn’t related to. No one except his brothers had ever really asked him, and even they gave him shit for it now and then, even Tobias, if good-naturedly. He kept tripping over his tongue and repeating himself, unused to putting the precise workings of his internal routing system to words, unexpectedly delighted to be given the chance, and rapidly forgetting that Miss Pauling had a gun in a holster on her thigh.

And then she had to go and spoil it. “Are you heading back up to Boston, then?”

His brain sputtered, abruptly, and then all activity ceased in a puff of smoke. It took him a few seconds to get going again. “No. No, nah, I ain’t, I’m—I left a couple months ago. I dunno really where I’m goin‘, just that I ain’t plannin’ on goin’ back.”

 _Not going back._ He kicked himself as soon as he said it, for this was hardly the first time he’d said too much to a perfect stranger, and the inevitable question that followed immediately after was always _why not?_ What was he supposed to say to them? Was he supposed to tell them about the long black weeks after the funeral, or about the horrible way he and everyone else in his family so quickly became accustomed to Tobias’s absence? That more than once Jeremiah had forgotten, had tricked himself into thinking his brother had just gone to Minnesota, to try out for the hockey leagues like he’d always talked about doing? About the fight that had happened when Jeremiah dug in his heels and _refused_ to let Tobias be forgotten, the way everyone had let themselves forget about Liam?

About how he had this stupid idiot idea of chasing down the bitch that had killed him?

Of course he damn well couldn’t.

So he braced himself, waiting, weighing possible answers and leaving them in reach. And when Miss Pauling simply smiled at him and said, “Well, then, can I offer you a job?”, he had absolutely no idea what to say.

 

 

* * *

 

Pyro knew, dimly, that at some point she had been cycled through respawn again. Maybe a few times? She wasn’t sure. She’d been through respawn dozens of times, hundreds probably, and the worst respawn ever left you with was nausea.

Even so, she kept wanting to check her leg where she had been shot. She was sure she’d been shot, and she was sure it still hurt, even if … didn’t, actually. But of course she couldn’t check, because she wasn’t the one telling her body what to do anymore.

She thought it had maybe been a week since she was shot, but she wasn’t sure about that either. It was hard to be sure of anything, behind the glass wall, and with the coming in and out of consciousness. She’d given up trying to wrest control back from the thing that was her but wasn’t her. Alice.

“I’m hungry,” Pyro heard herself say, and by now she was too tired to mentally cringe at the whine in her own voice. “Is it done yet? I’m hungry.”

“Not yet,” said Red.

For about an hour, now (maybe?), Alice had been sitting by the fire Red had started. This, at least, was something they agreed on, the fire. Maybe it had actually only been a few minutes? Pyro didn’t outright stare at fire much anymore; she usually had something else on her mind. Alice did not. And it was sort of nostalgic, just … losing herself in the fire. Peaceful. She could just look, and not think about much of anything if she didn’t feel like it. This limbo was exhausting enough as it was.

They were in the woods, now. Pyro wasn’t entirely sure why that had happened. They had been at Mannworks, and then somewhere else, and now the woods. It was like skipping between television channels, never getting the whole idea of the story. Red was here, and Clarence, and Miss Pauling and Spy. Scout, too. Alice had the good sense to avoid Scout for the most part. Maybe Alice wasn’t so bad after all.

“Is it done now?” Alice asked. She was looking at Red, and so Pyro was, too, and she caught the way Red grimaced, just slightly.

No. Definitely bad.

 

 

* * *

 

Pyro was whining about something. Scout resisted rolling his eyes for Miss Pauling’s sake. He had wrapped up his story, and tripped over it a few times in the telling, but she had seemed happy to listen. It was something nice, at least. A distraction.

Now Miss Pauling sighed. “She couldn’t have relapsed at a worse time.”

“What, firebug over there? We don’t need her anyway.”

“We need everyone, Scout. BLU Spy’s dead and BLU Engineer’s …” Scout grimaced, trying to disguise that for her sake, too. Miss Pauling tugged off her glasses and rubbed at her eyes with the heel of her palm. “I understand how you feel about her. But what matters right now is that she and Red are some of our best defenses, and now she’s dead weight until she recovers. I wish we’d found her before the robots came. Engineer _and_ Red said they noticed her acting strange, but she ran off. This might have been avoidable.”

“Weird how?”

“I’m not sure. I’ve never seen her on the edge of one of these fits. Engineer just said she was saying weird things … she kept talking about your Engineer. She told me once that she sees people that aren’t really there when it happens, sometimes.”

“No foolin’?” Scout said, studying the ground.

Before either of them could say anything further, Red was waving them over for dinner.

 

 

* * *

 

Like with pain, Pyro had learned she herself didn’t really get hungry when she was in the back seat. She had learned this after a particularly bad episode in her own house. It was a dull kind of feeling, hunger, where she was now. It was fine, even preferable. Remembering to feed herself was a nuisance sometimes. Alice didn’t seem to have the same problem. She took the ration she was given and dug in without complaint.

“I can’t do a lot to make MCI rations taste much better,” Pyro heard Red saying. “I tried, though. I had to live off C-rations for a while a few years ago and I’ll tell you right now you do get sick of them.”

“What’s a C-ration?” Clarence asked. Pyro thought it was Clarence. She couldn’t imagine that it was Scout. “Damn, you an’ Soldier, though, bet he’d love t’talk about rations.”

“Oh, heaven’s sake. I mentioned it to him once. He wouldn’t leave me alone for a week.”

“Thank you for trying anyway, Red,” Miss Pauling said. She and Scout had joined them at some point. “Has anyone seen Spy?”

No one answered. From the corner of Alice’s vision Pyro could make out a few shrugs and shaking heads. “Around somewhere, prob’ly. He kinda does what he wants,” Clarence said. “Figure maybe he ate already, I dunno. Maybe he’s huntin’.”

Red laughed. “What, with that little revolver of his?”

“I didn’t never said it was _smart_ huntin’, now did I?”

“Spy,” Miss Pauling interrupted, raising her voice. “If you’re around, come out, please. I’d like to call a meeting.”

At her side, Scout rolled his eyes. “Prob’ly gone traitor already,” he said, leaning back on one hand and looking dubiously down at his ration. “Damn spies, all of ’em. Bet you—”

“Hey,” Clarence snapped, “shut your stupid mouth, huh? Talk shit about your own team.”

Silence fell over the little camp. Alice lifted her head, and now Pyro could see Clarence glaring at a surprised Scout. After a few tense seconds, Red said something to their teammate that Pyro couldn’t make out, touching his knee. She wondered if a fight would break out; she wondered what Alice would do if it did.

But Scout said, “Fine, okay.” Grudging, a bit. And then, surprising her: “Sorry. Old habits.”

Clarence seemed to accept this. The RED Spy, though, did not appear. For a time it remained quiet. They ate. When most of them had finished, Pauling spoke again. “Well, I’ll just have to fill him in later.”

She told them in brief about a cliff and a river and some tracks Scout had found, and gave them the gist of what they were looking for: just a building, maybe by a lake. The robots had yet to be spotted. “And we’ll have to be extra careful about Pyro,” Pauling added, and Pyro was fairly certain her stomach would have dropped if she had been capable of it at the moment. “I’m hoping she’ll snap out of it soon, but until she does she needs the extra eyes on her.”

“What—hm.” Red. Pyro watched as Alice glanced over at them. “… What’s the matter with her, exactly?”

And then Pyro’s own voice. “What’s that s’posed to mean?”

“Um—”

“Nothing’s the matter,” Alice went on, and Pyro felt her face darkening. “I don’t need watched. I _don’t._ ”

It occurred to Pyro that she kind of hadn’t expected Alice to be capable of complete thoughts. At least not anymore. Not like that.

Discomfort was written all over Red’s face. They shifted their weight, and Pauling intervened. “From what Pyro has told me she had some kind of medical accident,” she said, smooth as silk. “Brain damage. She regresses like this sometimes.”

“… She’ll be fine if you’re real clear about tellin’ her what to do,” someone said, and it took Pyro entirely too long to process that it had been Scout. His voice was stiff and emotionless, and stayed that way as he continued. “She’s thick as anything like this but you give her an order an’ she’ll do it ‘til somethin’ kills her, usually. Always did for Engineer anyway.”

She had?

She couldn’t remember that. A sense of violation crept over her, slowly, like insects.

“I’m not thick,” Alice muttered, staring at the ground. And then under her breath, quiet enough that only Pyro could hear: “Stupid Scout.”

Well. Apparently she and Alice had more in common than just fire.

 

 

* * *

 

Pyro had mumbled something to herself, something Scout felt pretty sure was about him. His hackles jumped. It took him a long minute to force them back down.

“Alright,” Miss Pauling was saying, and he decided to pay attention to her instead. “Thank you, Scout. I think we’ll be okay here tonight. I’ll be keeping an eye on Pyro. Red, Clarence, you’ve no idea where Spy might have gone?”

“Where you least expect me, of course,” said the man directly behind Miss Pauling. Scout almost flinched; Pauling went very still before relaxing considerably. “No need to debrief me,” said Spy, toying with an unlit cigarette between his fingers. “I was listening.”

Of course he was. Scout rolled his eyes. “Yeah, creepin’ around an’ bein’ spooky, that’s real necessary. Real good for team morale.”

“I don’t believe I was speaking to you,” Spy said, and Miss Pauling stood up. “Regardless, I was checking the perimeter and felt it would be wiser to do so under stealth. Scout failed to do so on his return.”

“Maybe on account’a my job is _scoutin‘, not patrolin’_ , an’ anyway patrolin’ is a Pyro thing, okay?”

Spy looked unmoved, pocketing his cigarette. “I did check before we started supper,” Red said. “Why, did you find something I didn’t.”

“Nothing of not. I simply think it is an important thing to maintain regardless of one’s title.”

Scout knew baiting when he saw it, mostly. It was the not taking it that was the hard part. “An’ I ain’t gotta—”

“Stop,” Miss Pauling said, iron layered into her voice. Scout obeyed, bting down on his own tongue with perhaps more force than necessary. “Okay. It’s good to know we’re in the clear. Clarence, you’ll take first watch in about an hour, please. Then Scout, and I’ll take the last shift. Any objections?”

None were raised. Dinner finished, Clarence disappeared into his and Red’s tent to nap before his shift, and Pauling turned her attention to Pyro. Scout slunk away to find something else to pass the time with.

He had a map, half-buried in his bag. A good, proper map, outlining the boundaries of the forest. A dozen or so yards away from the camp he sat down with it, and a pen, and fidgeted with both for a long time before exhaling and actually starting to mark.

Here was where they’d driven in, to the west. To the southwest was where they’d left the car, and here was about where their camp was, and now he traced a light line along the path he’d taken earlier, scouting ahead.

Hell. It had been ages since he’d actually had to do any mapping. In the beginning, sure, every time they’d shipped out it was six or seven new puzzles to solve, over half-a-dozen new maps to make and routes to find. But there were only so many places with briefcases and gravel pits to fight over after all, and only so many viable strategies. He hadn’t drawn a map for anyone on the team in months. He felt rusty. But here he was, and this was his job.

He sketched out the routers he’d mentioned to Pauling, digging out a pencil to draw out paths that might be worth checking out. By water, she’d said. That was great, except they were in stupid Minnesota. Maybe the place didn’t really have ten thousand lakes, but there were still a hell of a lot more than he wanted to have to search around.

Soon enough it was too dark to see. Scout exhaled, looking out through the trees at the last dregs of light. Before he quite realized it he had tugged the dog tags out from beneath his shirt collar and for a few seconds just sat there with them, feeling their weight, feeling the embossed edges. Then he stowed his gear, getting up. Behind him he could hear the others smothering the fire, talking quietly here and there. Once in a while Pyro interjected something too loudly.

Of course she would have gone and turned stupid at the worst possible time. Ruining things again. He glared at the sun as it died.

_“Scout, I mean it—”_

** _“So do I!”_ **

He remembered biting out the words. The look on her face had not been as satisfying as he had wanted it to be. He would have just bitten his stupid tongue instead if he had known how it would turn out.


	17. 14: EYES OF FLAME

* * *

 

 

  
  


 

Everything was different and weird and Pyro wasn’t sure if she liked it like that. They weren’t fighting robots anymore, anyway. The redthings were still here, though. The RED team. She wasn’t supposed to fight them anymore. So she had done that, or someone like Pyro had done that. She wasn’t entirely sure. Sometimes it seemed like maybe there were two Pyros.

But then something really bad had happened, with the robots, and they had shot her in the leg and she kind of thought something else bad had happened before that, too? She remembered being scared. She still wasn’t very good at remembering things.

And now they were in a deep, thick forest, like one of Demoman’s fairy tales (which she had not gotten to hear in what seemed like a long time). The person named Red (were they the other Pyro? No, no, she didn’t think so…), they had said she absolutely must stay close by, as they started the campfire. Pyro had been too busy looking at the campfire to hear them right away, and so she had to be told twice. “How come?” she asked, after the second time.

“Because this is a very dangerous mission,” Red said, feeding more dry branches into the fire. All the trees around here were very dry, they would burn really well. Pyro had her axe. She had never chopped down a tree before, but maybe she could try that sometime soon. Red was still talking. “If we die out here we don’t respawn. We’re gone for good.”

No respawn. That sounded pretty bad. Pyro had decided she would do what Red said. Dying wasn’t fun. So far this trip hadn’t been much fun either. She couldn’t remember very much after the bad thing with the robots, but she was pretty sure they had been dragged here and there and everywhere for a while before coming here. The forest was cold and the ground was hard. She’d had to sleep in a tent with Miss Pauling, who snored. Pyro had lain awake for a long time, playing with one of her lighters, until she heard voices.

“… even your shift, stupid, you want a beatin’? Screw off. S’bad enough we gotta share a tent.”

“I should have thought you might appreciate a second watchman, or conversation to pass the time. No matter. I am only here to smoke. Do try to keep a handle on your temper.”

Scout—she was pretty sure it was Scout, the first voice—muttered something that she couldn’t make out. The other one sounded like redmask. Pyro thought about looking out the tent flap, and decided to just move a little closer to the side of the tent where the conversation was instead.

For a while, though, there was nothing else to be heard no matter how hard she listened. Maybe she had imagined it. The thought made her feel sort of cold. It was chased away a minute later when redmask spoke up again. “What of your brother, then?”

“I got a lot of those.”

“You know very well whom I mean. Roger.”

“Roger’s—Roger ain’t none’a your goddamn business, is what he is.”

“Hmm. No, I think he is. I should be a poor excuse for a suitor if I did not extend care toward the rest of your mother’s family. If your brother …”

Redmask said something else, but this time it was too quiet for her to hear. Scout answered, though. “… Don’t know, for sure. Last I called they said he was hangin’ in there, but, I mean, they said it could change jus’ like that, too. An’ …”

He dropped his voice.

Pyro listened a while longer, but heard no more.

 

* * *

 

Pyro had a camera. It was a fun thing to have, and she liked feeling the weight of it as it swung with every step they took through the woods. It felt like an important thing, though she could not have said exactly why. But it was important, and so were the pictures in her jacket’s breast pockets. They were all of different things and there were words under most of them, which she couldn’t read.

On their second day in the woods she had looked at all the photos, one by one, as they walked. She hadn’t been able to glean anything from them, but that was alright. She recognized some of the things in them, like Sniper and the RED scout, who had a name now. It was probably the most interesting thing she did all day; nothing much else happened. They just walked. She was sore and had burrs stuck all over her clothes. When they made camp again that night, though, she heard people talking again. The first voice, she was pretty sure, belonged to Red. “Poor Blue. I can’t imagine … gosh, it creeps me out, if I’m being honest.”

The scout that wasn’t Scout answered. “What, her, uh, bein’ a kid thing?”

“Yeah. I talked to her some the day before it happened, you know? She really did seem wound up over something. I wish I’d tried harder to talk to her, maybe I could have helped. I heard someone on BLU say it happens when she’s upset. She just … goes away.”

“I heard one of ‘em say she was like that for years. Yeah. I dunno. Somebody else told me she was a real rat, too. Not worth trustin’.”

“Really? She doesn’t seem so bad to me. Well … a little off. But which one of us here isn’t?”

“I guess.”

“I bet she’s had it hard, with her face like that.”

Pyro heard nothing more after that, either.

She felt weird all the next day, uncomfortable all over for no reason she could tell. It kept feeling to her like maybe Red was staring at her, but they never were when she looked. She tried to distract herself by humming as they walked, but she couldn’t seem to keep it up longer than a few seconds; whatever melody she was aiming for kept slipping away.

It was so frustrating. Eventually she just decided to pretend the feeling wasn’t there.

Soon they stopped to eat and to rest, and then she stopped being able to ignore it because it got worse. She kept looking at Red, and thinking back to last night and what she’d overheard. She had all the words but she couldn’t figure out what they meant. It was just like how she couldn’t read. She wished the other Pyro were here. The other Pyro could have figured it out, she thought.

But she wasn’t here. There was only Pyro herself, biting and worrying her lip and stealing glances at Red, and in the end she got up and crossed over to where they were sitting on the ground on their own, doing something with a piece of paper. “Hi,” she said, because she had no idea what else to say.

They glanced up at her, and she got a quiet little smile. It didn’t look all the way there. They had a red bandana tied around their head, keeping the hair out of their eyes. “Hey, Blue.”

“What’re you doing?”

“Origami,” they said, folding the paper they were holding over a tiny bit. One side of it was white, and the other side was light green. “Paper-folding. Have you ever heard of it?”

Pyro didn’t think she had, and said as much. Red nodded quietly, saying nothing more but carrying on with the paper. As Pyro watched it went from a flat fold to a spiky ball to something else—“It’s a bird!”

Red laughed, tugging on the paper bird’s tail. The wings twitched, then flapped, moving in concert with every pull. Pyro stared, enchanted. “It’s Japanese,” they explained, letting Pyro take it when she reached out for it. “We were sent to Japan for a mission a few years ago, and I learned it there.”

“It’s really pretty. Can I see?”

Red handed it to her, and Pyro turned it over in her hands with reverence. It was a tiny, delicate thing. “They mean a lot of things over in the East,” they went on. “Peace, mostly, I think. And healing.” A pause. “You can keep it, if you’d like.”

Pyro looked back up at them, eyes wide. “Really?”

“Sure.”

Delighted, she looked back down at the delicate little thing cradled in her hands. With care she put it down on her lap, and after a moment’s thought she dug into her pockets, digging out the photos. “Um,” she started, looking at them again, trying to remember, “I think—I think maybe you asked me to see my pictures? Back at the other place? I can show you them. They’re good.”

Red had raised their eyebrows, and now glanced between her and the pictures in her hand. “… Sure,” they said again, but it took them a few seconds.

It felt like this was important. Pyro wished she could remember why as she handed them to Red. She went back to fiddling with the bird as they flipped through them, pausing only when they got to the picture of Clarence. “‘Not scout, not T,’” they read. “What’s T?”

“I dunno. I didn’t write it.”

“You didn’t?”

Pyro had opened her mouth to answer when she realized she didn’t know what to say. Should she tell anyone about how she thought there was an other Pyro? It kind of seemed like maybe she shouldn’t, like it was supposed to be secret. She shut her mouth again, a little bewildered, suddenly uncomfortable again. “I don’t … maybe I did.”

Red said nothing, peering down at the photo. Pyro felt suddenly red-faced, embarrassed. She cast around for something else to talk about, anything, and found only Red. She latched onto the first idea that came to her. “Um, Red?”

They were still looking at the photo. “Yes?”

“Are you–how come is it everyone calls you ‘them’?”

That got Red to look at her again. They looked nonplussed, studying her instead now, and for a second Pyro worried that she’d asked the wrong thing. “Well,” they said at last, “I like it.”

Pyro had more questions about this, but keeping in with the rest of the day so far, she was having a hard time figuring out what they were. It wound up not mattering much; Miss Pauling came and told the two of them that it was time to go again before either could speak again. Pyro took back her photos and put them back in her pockets, and carefully stowed the little paper bird inside her pack, on top, so it wouldn’t be crushed.

Off they went. It was hard work, making it through the forest with all their gear. Besides the camera and her bag with clothes and food and stuff, she had to carry her axe and her flamethrower too. She wasn’t sure what all exactly was in her bag, really. She hadn’t packed it.

She didn’t overhear anything that night, when they settled down to sleep. After she and Miss Pauling went into their tent, though, Pyro asked, “When are we gonna get there?”

Pauling paused, her glasses in her hands. Her hair was down, which Pyro still wasn’t used to. It was long and straight and dark, and very pretty, and the first time she had seen Pauling let it down she had touched her own hair a little wistfully. It used to be long, she could remember that. She missed it. “I don’t know,” Miss Pauling said at last, folding the glasses up neatly. “It could be a while yet.”

“What’re the others doing?”

“The team?” Pyro nodded. “Fighting robots.”

“Oh. Scout said there weren’t any robots in the woods.”

“Mm, Scout said he hadn’t _seen_ any robots in the woods. I’ll be very surprised if we make it through without meeting any at all. We’re going to try and find where they’re being made.”

“The same kinds of robots from the other place?”

Miss Pauling hesitated. “I think so. I guess there could be ones we haven’t seen before.”

The next day, it rained. It was light, but steady, and it made everything cold and slick. Once Spy fell in the mud. It was all very pretty, at least, the rain pattering on the red and gold leaves, tearing them off now and then. But it made for very slow going, and soon everyone was soaked and silent, and Pyro thought it was probably a bad idea to try talking to any of them.

They had just made their way up over another ridge, one that had very few trees but a lot of rocks, and in particular one sharp overhang where the ground was mostly dry. Here Miss Pauling called for a rest again, letting everyone sit down. Scout, though, started pulling himself up one of the lone trees. “Careful,” Miss Pauling called after him as he went up. “Don’t slip.”

“Who, me? Nah, Miss P., this’s me we’re talkin’ about here, c’mon.”

“I mean it. If you break your arm we’re going to have to call the entire mission off.”

“How come we didn’t bring Medic anyway?” Clarence said. He had pulled off his shirt and was wringing it out, while next to him Red was tying a dry bandana around their hair again. “Seems kinda like the smart thing t’do, not havin’ no respawn an’ all.”

“The team needed them more than we did, with you five gone,” Pauling said. “They need all the support they can get.”

Scout kept hauling himself up the branches, nimble as anything. For her part Pyro had gotten about as far under the underhang as she could manage, sick of being rained on endlessly. She hated the rain, it made her skin crawl and pushed bile up the back of her throat. Mostly out of the wet, she pulled her camera out of her bag and peered into the viewfinder. She caught most of them in its frame: Red was talking to Spy about something, and Clarence was slouched up against them with his eyes closed. Spy was smoking, occasionally pausing to answer Red, and next to him sat Pauling, fiddling with her handheld radio. Pyro snapped the picture.

She put away the camera and was waiting for the film to develop when there was a wet thump. Scout had dropped out of the tree, walking toward the group a little more quickly than seemed normal. “Hey,” he said, cutting into the conversation, “hey, uh, we, we got a problem. Miss Pauling? We got a problem.”

Pauling stopped, blinking up at him. “Is it a big problem?”

“No, it’s a freakin’ huge problem, an’ it’s makin’ big damn tracks toward us real damn fast, look.”

He pointed down the way they had come. Everyone followed his arm, just in time to see a young tree snap and fall over sideways as something huge and dark shouldered past it.

The next few seconds were a blur. They were on the move again in an instant, bolting in the opposite direction of the thing—all Pyro could see ahead of her was Scout leading the way, leaping fallen logs and sliding down ditches. Clarence brought up the rear, herding them the way Pyro’s dog sometimes tried to herd rabbits.

For maybe thirty seconds, nothing happened. They just ran. Once Pyro looked behind her, but she could not see anything chasing them.

A hoarse shout made her look forward again. A high whine built in her throat as soon as she did, and died in the same moment. Ahead of them, sitting on its hind legs in the dirt and rising up nearly as tall as the trees themselves, was—Pyro had no other word for it—a monster.

It shifted its weight as they stared up at it, shifting uncomfortably human hands that were so large they could have easily wrapped around Pyro’s waist. It had sickly-looking gray-and-pink skin from its bulbous head to its twitching tail, interrupted only by the mane of limp black hair that fell from its long, slinky neck. Its face was mostly long, blunt teeth, and what wasn’t teeth was eyes: massive, bulging eyes, one on each side of its head, burning solid red.

No one dared move. Pyro hardly dared breathe. As they stared, the beast tilted its head sideways, huffing steamy breath into the cold air. Without warning it leaned forward on its huge hands, mouth gaping, and gave a scream like metal scraping over glass. Pyro recoiled, or would have, except Red had grabbed her arm and started to run.

The horrible scream came again, followed at once by the heavy thud of massive feet as the monster gave chase. Pyro barely saw where she was going, blindly following the others as they crashed through the underbrush, through a narrow gap in the trees, veering into a gully. The pop-groan-crash of a tree being torn apart split the air behind them and Pyro glanced over her shoulder just long enough to see an aspen slam into the earth, the monster clambering over with splinters falling from its mouth. Ahead the gully rose and fell and rose and fell again, rocks and fallen branches slick with rain threatening to make them slip. Behind them the monster was gaining again, a chorus of heavy breathing and thundering footsteps, it was going to catch up to them soon and it would tear them apart and gobble them up—

“In there! In there, _c’mon!_ ”

Scout’s words drowned out her thoughts. Pyro looked and glimpsed something narrow and black looming ahead of them, set in the wall of the gully where it forked. Before her the scouts were surging toward it and she tried her best to follow, chest aching, legs screaming at her, there was a stitch in her side and the distance seemed impossible, and even so in another heartbeat they were nearly upon it.

There was another shout. This time it was piercing, right in her ear, and from the corner of her eye Pyro saw Red trip and hit the ground.

She skidded to a halt, frozen, staring. She flinched when Red called out to her, reaching for her, their voice thin and desperate. Behind them the monster charged ever closer. Every part of her screamed at her to run. She did—but forward, taking Red by the hand.

They stumbled as she pulled them upright, one leg giving out on them. Pyro didn’t get a second chance, for suddenly Clarence was there, dragging Red up, slinging one of their arms over his shoulder. Pyro followed suit, and together they got Red upright, but by now it was much too late. The monster had arrived.

It came to a crashing halt behind them with a wild hiss, its neck arched over them like a serpent. Pyro nearly tripped herself when Clarence shrugged Red off and put himself between them and the monster. His hands were white-knuckled around his scattergun as he looked at Pyro. “Get Red inside!”

“But—”

“ _GO!_ ”

Anything else that might have been said was lost between the monster’s scream and the boom of the scattergun. Witless, Pyro twisted to drag Red toward the cave mouth, where she could see Miss Pauling and Scout. In another moment Scout had darted past her, shouting hoarsely at the beast and starting to pepper it with his pistol. Then Pauling was there, helping bring Red to the far back of the cave where it was dark and cramped.

When Pyro looked back again she saw now three men through the narrow gap of sunlight: Scout, Clarence, and Spy, hanging off to the side and picking his shots. He and Scout were edging closer and closer to the cave, but somehow the monster had gotten in front of Clarence. His gun was missing.

Behind her Red was screaming at Miss Pauling now, and Pauling was answering in kind, fighting to keep them where they were. The monster’s attention was on Clarence, or it was until Scout threw a stone right at its eye. The thing bellowed, reeling, and Clarence bolted.

It was only a dozen yards to safety. He had nearly made it halfway when the monster grabbed him. It caught him up like a hawk catching a sparrow, tossing him into the air with one titanic hand, and with perfect precision its head lunged out to pluck him out of the air.

There was a scream more horrible than any Pyro had yet heard. There was an audible crack. The monster shook its head like a dog, sending blood flying through the air. In the middle of it all the boom of a revolver rang out. A perfect round hole appeared in the monster’s jaw.

It screeched, and as it did Clarence fell to the ground with wet smack. Scout bolted forward as the monster pawed at its head, grabbing Clarence and dragging him back, back, back into the cave with Spy close on his heels. Red was still shouting, Clarence was howling brokenly, Pauling and Spy and Scout were all trying to talk over each other as they huddled against the back of the cave. Pyro remained mute, the noise and horror washing over her.

Things went silent. Things went dark.

 

* * *

 

And then, there was light, but it was only the flaming red glow of the monster’s eyes as it tried to force its head into the cave. It burbled and coughed as if it were having trouble breathing, gnashing its teeth together as it tried to reach them, but its skull was too large for the opening. All Pyro could see were its eyes, and its bloodstained teeth. She scrambled further backwards, her back hitting the wall, and the monster screamed again.

A gunshot. Spy’s revolver. One of the red circles vanished. The monster bellowed, jerking its head out and away and hitting the wall with such force that dirt rained down from the ceiling. For a few seconds all that could be seen of it were its legs as it trotted back and forth outside of the cave.

Then, without warning, it ran off, down the branch in the gully and out of sight.

There was a gap of perhaps five seconds where there was no sound. The monster did not return. Then Clarence’s breath hitched and turned into a wail, and it was like a dam breaking. Pyro looked and saw Red with Clarence pulled into their lap, their shoulders shaking. They had both hands wrapped around one of his. The one he still had. His other arm simply wasn’t there anymore. Pyro could not bring herself to look away when she saw it, just a raw pit of flesh and bone. It gushed and spurted and poured, staining most of Red’s body.

Everyone else was talking. Noise, noise, more noise, shit. Pyro stared down at where Red and now Scout were fumbling to try and stem the bleeding, to no avail. Pauling and Spy were practically shouting at one another over something. The blood kept flooding, now Scout was covered with it, the pool was large enough that it had nearly reached where Pyro sat. Someone was saying they’d lost the first-aid kit in the run. Someone was crying. Something twisted in Pyro’s head.

Abruptly she unshouldered her pack and her flamethrower, letting them drop. She tore the pack open, found the axe, and kicked the bag aside before taking both the axe and the flamethrower nearer to the front of the cave, out of the way. No one noticed as she propped the axe up by its handle against one side of the wave, but they sure as hell did when she pointed her flamethrower at the metal axehead and pulled the trigger.

The fire bloomed forth, harmlessly licking at the dirt wall and the treated handle. For the first time in what felt like years Pyro could think clearly again, and she poured all of into this, into bearing down on the axehead with the fire. “Pyro?” she heard Pauling call. “Pyro, get away from there!”

Pyro glanced over at her, just for an instant. Then it was back to the fire. “Spy, stop her,” Pauling hissed, but before he could do anything Pyro had dropped the flamethrower and picked up the axe in her gloved hands, the head glowing hot in the dark. No one said anything as she returned to the back of the cave. She didn’t really notice.

When she crouched down next to Clarence, Scout snapped at her. “H-hey, screw off, what the fuck? The hell d’you think you’re doin’, psycho, get—”

The words hardly reached her. She was studying Clarence, who was now deathly pale. She had seen injuries like this a hundred times, fighting RED. “Artery’s cut,” she said, “right?”

“Wh … y, yeah, but—”

“Hold him down. I’m going to cauterize it.”

Silence, but for Clarence’s whimpering. No one moved. Pyro snarled. “He’s going to goddamn bleed out and then he’ll be dead, somebody fucking hold him down!”

That worked. Scout dove to pin Clarence’s chest to the floor, sitting on his legs, and Pyro could heard Red’s hysteric mumblings and apologies as they tore off the bandana from around their head and put it between Clarence’s teeth. Pyro checked her grip on the axe. “Okay,” she said. “Okay, on three. One—two— _three_ —”

There was an unholy scream and the sizzling hiss of hot metal on skin, but all that Pyro really registered was the nauseating, cloying smell of burning flesh.

 

* * *

 

The air was finally quiet. Quieter. Quieter than it had been in the cave, with so many people talking and screaming and crying. At some point Pyro had left, walking outside to slouch on the leaf-littered ground.

The ground was wet. It had stopped raining, but it had rained enough to make everything uncomfortable. It was seeping through her clothes, sitting there as she was, and the longer bits of her hair clung stubbornly to her face. She was only passingly aware of this. The handle of her axe felt wet, too, still sitting in her right hand—but that was probably sweat.

She wondered if the monster would come back. A moment later she wondered if the monster had been there at all. But something had torn Clarence’s arm off, or her axe wouldn’t be as filthy as it was, and she wouldn’t be sitting on the wet ground trying to get the reek of charred skin out of her nose. She didn’t notice Miss Pauling coming out of the cave. She didn’t notice much of anything until Pauling was pretty much right in front of her, watching her. It took Pyro a moment to register this, and when she finally looked up she almost didn’t register her as Pauling. The woman looking down at her looked about as far from the Pauling that Pyro was used to seeing as it got, with her hair askew and with dirt and scratches over every inch of skin that Pyro could see. One of the lenses in her glasses was missing. Even her voice had a ragged note to it, when she said, “Welcome back.”

Pyro lifted her eyebrows, snorted, and looked away. “That’s what we’re calling it?”

“Well, I’m glad you’re back. Clarence would probably be dead by now, otherwise.”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“No,” Pauling said. “You were right, about the artery. There’s a big one right there, I killed someone like that once. Severed the arm, he bled out in twenty minutes. They weren’t having much luck stopping it with pressure. I’d say you saved his life.” She paused. “I had no idea you knew first aid. We never had that information on you. Where did you learn to do that?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

No answer. That worked, she’d take it. She kept trying to find something else to focus on, she didn’t want to _talk_. Her eyes happened to land on the scuffle of leaves and kicked earth where the monster had stood. A sudden urge to go and light it on fire flared up inside her, and she tried to focus on that instead. It didn’t work for long, not when Pauling sighed and dropped down to sit beside her. She said nothing, though, and Pyro would take that too. Now she tried listening to the forest sounds, to the drip of water rolling off leaves and the low wind. Something in the distance was making a high _chick-chick-chick_ noise every minute or so, and it was joined by a droning noise that for a tense instant reminded her of the machines before it broke off into a chirrup.

And she was torn away from all of it when Pauling asked, “What do you remember?”

“… About what?”

“About what happened,” Pauling said, and Pyro glanced at her to find herself being watched. “Before this, I mean. I don’t believe you had come back to us when we first started running. Do you remember why we left Mannworks?”

Pyro grimaced.

They pieced it together, slowly and frustratingly. Pyro’s memory of the last two and a half weeks was patchy and haphazard. Some things she recalled clear as day, like Red handing her the paper bird, and others seemed like dreams. And before any of that, the last thing she could really remember was a desperate, urgent need to go tell someone something, but the what and the who and the why were all lost. Nothing beside remained.

It was a bad, fuzzy picture of what had happened and why they were here, in the end, but it would have to do. “What now?” Pyro asked at the end of it. She’d started working the filth off her axe again as they spoke, scrubbing away the seared blood as best she could. It was probably as clean as it was going to get, for now. She put it down as Pauling exhaled, stripped off her gloves, and pulled a lighter out from her pocket instead. On, off …

“We’ll go back, I guess,” Pauling said at last. “We can’t keep Clarence out here, not like this. He came around a moment ago. Sort of. I had a hard time making sense of him … hopefully he’ll black out again.”

“How’s Red?”

“Not good, I think. They won’t talk to anyone.”

Pyro nodded, chewing her lip. Her lighter was sparking and not lighting every time. She hoped she had more fuel. “What … what was that … thing? The—the thing that tore off Clarence’s arm. It was real, right?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean—Pauling, come on. I … _see_ things, sometimes. I know that’s in your stupid file about me, I told you in that interview after Coldfront. Things that can’t be real.” On, off, spark, spark, on. “I saw a monster with red eyes. Is that what you saw?” Pauling began to answer, but Pyro cut her off. “And even if you tell me yes how can I know I’m really talking to the real Pauling anyway?” she muttered, staring at the disrupted leaves again. She wasn’t even trying to make the lighter catch now, just pulling the lip open and clapping shut, a rhythmic _snap-snap-snap_. “I could be making all of this up. None of this is even possible. I just cauterized a severed arm, I don’t—hey!”

Pauling had reached out and taken the lighter right out of Pyro’s hands. She looked it over, sliding her fingers over the worn corners. “What were you doing with this just now?”

Pyro tried to grab it back, only for Pauling to hold it out of reach. Pyro grit her teeth. “I was just—I was just messing with it, give it back.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, it makes me feel better. It’s—it’s a coping mechanism. Give it back.”

“Is any of what I’ve just done something your hallucinations could do?” Pauling asked. “Can they take things out of your hands?” she went on, and reached out to press the warm metal back into Pyro’s outstretched palm. “Or give them back?”

Pyro stared down at the lighter, suddenly speechless. In the corner of her eye she saw Pauling smile, a little. “Something really did chase us,” she said as Pyro forced herself to look at Pauling again. “I’m not sure what it was, but it did have red eyes. And it was real enough to hurt Clarence.” Pauling snorted softly. “When he woke up he kept calling it the … the ‘Jersey devil’ or something like that. We all saw it. You can ask anyone else and they’ll say the same thing.”

Pyro had opened her mouth to answer when movement near the mouth of the cave caught her eye. She lifted her gaze to find Scout standing there, watching them.

“… Even Scout?” she asked after a moment, and Pauling grimaced.

 

* * *

 

Pauling left after that, pairing off with Scout to talk about what sounded like their next move. That left Pyro sitting alone again, with her axe and her lighter, still trying to process what Pauling had just done.

She wasn’t sure how long she sat there, trying to iron out her stubborn mind. It seemed like the sun was stuck in the sky, held there by the threatening clouds. Eventually she got up and started meandering down the gully. She had not gone far at all before a weathered old cottonwood rose up in her path, its branches low enough that she could have knocked her head on some of them.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d climbed a tree, but in another few minutes she had gotten a solid ten feet off the ground. From her perch she could see down the forks of the gully, from where they’d run in to where, presumably, the beast had fled. The edges were bordered with dead leaves and long stretches of golden aspens crowding around. She could see the footprints of the monster, too, the devil. She could even see the dried blood on the leaves in front of the cave.

She could feel her lighter in her pocket, though she couldn’t remember putting it there. It felt like something was keeping her from taking it out again. She realized abruptly that she was hungry, too, and suddenly dying for a cigarette. A winning combination. She was beginning to feel all the scrapes and bruises she’d acquired in their flight. Probably before that, too. Alice wasn’t exactly graceful.

It took her probably too long to realize she had the beginnings of a dehydration headache. By then the sun had nearly set. Reluctantly she picked her way down from the tree. As she stepped down from the last branch, someone spoke. “How was the weather up there?”

“— _Dammit_ , don’t _do_ that!” Pyro said, whirling to face the RED Spy where he was leaning against the tree trunk. He only chuckled. “God. What do _you_ want?”

“Your expertise,” he said. At her bewildered expression, he tugged something small and rectangular from his breast pocket and pulled something else out of it. A cigarette. “Specifically your lighter. Do a trick for me, won’t you?”

“Seriously? Use your own.”

“I would love to, except it would seem I have lost mine in the chase. And I am not so callous as to bother Red simply to light a cigarette right now. He lifted one eyebrow, waiting. Pyro glowered at him. He smirked. ”I would be happy to give you one should you oblige me."

The lighter was out of her pocket and in her hand before she could even think about it. It took a few tries for it to catch, but she lit the one he had in his hand, and then the one he handed her after. It was a welcome familiarity, and she shut her eyes to try and absorb the calm it brought.

For a few minutes, that was all there was. Around them the night was much louder than she would have expected, full of unseen insects and the occasional cry of a bird. Once something small and furry rushed out from a nearby pocket of bushes to scurry past them and vanish into the ground.

She wasn’t entirely expecting it when she said, “Tell me what happened at Coldfront.”

Spy made a contemplative sort of noise. From the corner of her eye she saw him look skyward, where the black clouds still lurked. “A great deal happened. We were there for months, after all.”

“I don’t want your crap. Dell told me you had something to do with my coming back. And I know you’re the reason he left.”

“I am?” Pyro did not answer, watching him with narrowed eyes. He met her gaze, and he looked entertained. “I’m afraid that’s only half right. I only showed him the door. He chose to step through.”

“Sure. Fine. Why?”

“To escape that insane little war of ours. I expected you to follow him, you know, like a duckling. He spoke of having you come along.”

“Where did he go?” Pyro pressed.

“The man was a savant with machinery, Pyro. He went into the pay of none other than Gray Mann himself.”

Her cigarette kept burning. She shifted with her tongue, a little, and found now it mostly just tasted like ash. “I guess,” she said, ages later, “I guess I was hoping you’d tell me something else.”

“Mm. So sorry to disappoint. I take it the thought had crossed your mind.”

Pyro shrugged, taking the cigarette from her mouth and studying the glowing end. “It makes more sense than anything else. He told me … I guess it doesn’t matter what he told me. Did—you know he’s dead now. Right?”

Spy gave a soft laugh.

It died in his throat when Pyro shot out her hand, grabbing him by the collar. Her own voice sounded like grinding stones. “Did you have anything to do with that?”

“Of course not.”

Pyro’s grip tightened. “If you’re lying to me—”

She broke off, ripping her hand away with a garbled curse. Spy had pressed the lit end of his cigarette to her bare hand. “I am not,” he said coolly as she glared at him. “And I do not understand your fixation on him, but if I were you I would not allow it to drive me to violence. I will return it in kind.”

“Yeah?” she spat. “What’s one more scar to me?”

“I do not leave scars. I leave corpses. And you are much more useful to both myself and the rest of us alive, even damaged as you are, so I would advise you to consider your actions more carefully. I understand pyromania to be an impulse-control disorder, but you seem aware enough of yourself to manage it for the most part.” There was disdain in his voice. “Be an adult.”

The words stung, mostly because they were true. Pyro ran her unburnt hand through her hair and bit her tongue, trying to get ahold of herself. “… Alright,” she got out eventually. “Fine. But you were still the reason he left. You were the one that told him—”

“Good heavens. I will use small words. I was the one that delivered Gray’s proposal to Conagher. You were the bargaining chip. Cure you, soften him. If that had proved fruitless I would have approached from some other angle.”

“So … so why? You’re on Gray’s side?”

“Not remotely. I told Pauling of the entire affair after Conagher disappeared.”

The cigarettes had burned out, now. Spy was only a dark shape beside her, and when he sighed at first she thought it was the wind.

 

* * *

 

Pyro’s headache had only gotten nastier after another two cigarettes, but that was alright. Things could be worse, she supposed. All she needed was some water and something to eat, and probably some time to think.

So she was back at the cave now, having left Spy by the tree. Pauling and Scout were still sitting at the mouth of it, talking quietly, with a small fire burning between them. A few feet past them she could see her bag half-spilled onto the dirt. She stepped past Pauling and Scout and made her way over, and had just kneeled down to pick the bag up when she noticed she was nearly on top of what at first appeared to be a nest of fabric. She recognized it a moment later as all the bedrolls unfurled and arranged to create something for Clarence to be laid on. He was flat on his back, eyes shut, the blanket pulled to his neck. Close enough to touch him sat Red, who was curled into a tight ball, their forehead pressed against their knees. They did nothing as Pyro quietly collected her things.

She forced her attention onto her bag. She wasn’t even sure what all she had in here. She took inventory as she unpacked and repacked: matches, lighter fluid, tinder. Blanket, gloves. No clothes, someone else must have had those. Her camera, and a single pack of film for it. There was some rope and a decent supply of food in the form of rations and granola bars, maybe a week’s worth. She found gauze and rubbing alcohol, too, all survivalist stuff that had clearly been packed by someone who wasn’t Alice. Her mask was not there. She wondered if Alice cared about that anymore, or if she had stopped when Pyro had.

The last thing she found, way at the bottom of the bag and half-crushed, was a green piece of paper that had been folded strangely. It was the origami bird Red had given her, she remembered with a jolt. Its delicate beak had been crushed, and one of its wings torn off. The irony was not lost on her, but she sort of wished it had been. She was still holding it when someone coughed.

She lifted her head and froze. Red had shifted; she could see their face now, heavy with shadows from what firelight reached this far back into the cave. Their cheeks were shining wet and their eyes were terribly bloodshot, and they were watching her fixedly. The look on their face was sheer poison.

It only lasted a moment before it crumpled, too much to be maintained. Pyro remained frozen, unsure what to do or say. Red dropped their eyes and their gaze lingered, just for a second, on the paper bird. Then they curled in on themselves again with a choked sob.

Her heart had begun pounding. She looked away, suddenly breathless as her thoughts returned to what she had done only an hour or two earlier. She had never heard anyone scream the way Clarence had when she’d pushed the searing metal against the stump where his arm had been, not even in all her time on BLU. She had done it to save him, even Pauling had said he would have been dead by now otherwise, but—she couldn’t shake the looming sense of guilt. She could remember Alice—or herself—God, she couldn’t tell—she could remember hesitating before going back to help Red up. Maybe if she hadn’t, then …

She looked down at the bird still in her hands, and swallowed, hard. Then she turned, and spoke. “… Red?”

No answer. She tried again, not sure if they would even acknowledge her, wondering if it might be best if they didn’t. “Red, I’m … I’m sorry. For what I had to do.”

No answer.

Slowly, Pyro breathed out and then in again. On impulse, she leaned across the little distance between her and Red and carefully placed the paper bird on the ground beside them. It was maybe this that finally made Red stir, but they did not look at her. Just at the bird, and then at Clarence. Pyro forced herself to watch.

“You were right,” Red said at last.

“I … about what?”

Red put one hand over their eyes and took a shuddering breath. “What you said. Sorry doesn’t do anything at all.”


	18. 15: POOL OF TEARS

* * *

 

 

  
  


 

 

 

Scout didn’t carry a watch, because he was just fine at getting an idea of the time of day from the sun. This worked best, of course, when the sun was visible. This was not the case, the morning after their encounter with the beast. To say the sky was dark was putting it mildly. Scout had smelled a storm in the air from the moment he’d gotten up, though it seemed unwilling to break. So everything was just unpleasantly gray, and he was only half-certain that it was probably about eleven o’clock.

They had already been walking about three, maybe three and a half hours. The pace was an absolute joke, and it was making him nervous and testy. The thick forest and the threat of danger would have been bad enough, and to his frustration every so often he would find himself thinking: _Clarence lost an arm, not a leg, can’t we hurry it up?_

It was a mean, callous thing to think. He kicked himself every time it came back, but it wouldn’t leave.

They had lost one of the first-aid kits in the flight the day before, the one with the painkillers. Pyro had produced a second one that everyone had forgotten about in the panic in the cave, but it only had gauze and antiseptic. Clarence had woken everyone up in the middle of the night, screaming, though from pain or from terror Scout wasn’t sure. It had taken twenty minutes to get him to stop, and the crying that had followed had driven Scout out of the cave to take over watch from Pyro. It was just as well. He had been wired and edgy, starting at shadows, unable to keep his thoughts steady. Unable to push out the thought of _that could have been me._ When Spy finally came to relieve him of watch duty, Scout couldn’t help himself; he had gone back and dug through his bag until he found his brother’s lighter. Scratched and worn, it was a comfort to run his hands over. He found a zippered pocket on his jacket and stowed it in there, over his heart.

It had been a relief to get back in motion the next morning, though the party was subdued and silent. Scout got the impression Red hadn’t slept at all; they wouldn’t speak to anyone but Clarence unless absolutely necessary, and stuck to him like tar the whole morning. Pauling was quiet and gave orders in a clipped sort of tone, while Spy and Pyro hadn’t said anything all morning. Clarence himself, pale and drawn, simply did whatever he was told.

Once already there had been a fight, a quick, low argument between Red and Pauling about handing Clarence off to someone else. He had been leaning on Red for balance, and Red’s limp—for they had turned their ankle yesterday—was becoming more pronounced. Red reminded Scout a little of a dog guarding a bone, in the way they answered Pauling when she suggested they let someone else help, but they relented in the end. Pyro took over, with Clarence’s remaining arm draped over her shoulders, and Red walked on his opposite side with their hand tangled in his shirt.

It was a poor start to the day. But on the bright side, Scout supposed, he hadn’t seen any signs of robots—or of the monster.

If made to guess, he probably would have ventured that it was around one in the afternoon when they first stopped for a break. He left the others to themselves, still too full of nervous energy to sit still, and went ahead to find an easy route through the trees and to check for danger. He had the good fortune to find a clear way with good cover and no signs of trouble, and soon they continued on. This was what he did over and over all day, and he was glad for the work. It kept his mind of everything else, like being sore and hungry and more afraid than he would care to admit.

And it turned out to be a good thing he was doing it, too, because around the middle of the afternoon, as the dark clouds were growing darker, he saw them in the distance: a squadron of robots, marching in such a way that they would intercept them if they kept on their current path. Cursing, he tore back off to the others, as quick and quietly as he could.

Pauling went pale when he delivered the news. “How close?”

“We got four, _maybe_ five minutes’ head start on ’em if we turn around, I figure. I think they had some’a those spidery things, and the regular sized ones, I’m not sure how many.”

“God. Of course they’d pick now to turn up,” she muttered, running a hand through her bangs. “Okay, Scout. Lead the way.”

Off they went. Scout led them north and east, by his compass, putting them deeper into the forest but on higher ground. Higher ground in this case was a hill that leveled off to become a plateau with towering pines and carpeted in fallen pine needles. Once or twice he looked for the machines again, when they were high enough and the trees were thin enough, but he had lost visual.

They had just rounded a section of wild lilacs, a shock of color amid the evergreens, when there came the sound Scout had never wanted to hear again: a piercing screech, ringing out over the air. A heartbeat later he heard someone shout, and the raucous crash of plants being torn apart.

Scout had been so certain it would be the devil that when the recons began storming toward them from a thick bank of bushes some yards away he stared in shock. Then a shot rang out, and another, Spy’s revolver and Pauling’s pistol, and then they were off and running.

The robots were fewer than he would have anticipated, and they began to drop bullet by bullet as they put distance between them. Relief swept over him, or it did until something shot out in front of them. It was a roiling mass of black, kicking up the pine needles, and Scout skidded to a halt as the spider machines came racing up to meet them.

He was fumbling for his scattergun when a familiar roar shook the air, accompanied by a burst of flame. The spiders seemed to hiss and screech as Pyro sent her flamethrower gushing through them, thrown up and away with bursts of compressed air while the others kept moving. Scout followed, and glancing behind himself he saw her shooting fire in a wide arc onto the earth, thick with pine needles, and onto the tree branches between them and the machines. It all began to burn, and she turned to catch up.

Eyes front. Scout was on point again, desperately seeking a safe path, but everything was dark and looked the same and there was no time to check his direction. East, still, maybe, opposite of where they wanted to go, and the ground had began to go up again.

Suddenly the trees thinned out and Scout stopped running. Fifty paces ahead there was nothing—the hill had become a cliff, and below it roared a river. He swore quietly, glancing behind at his teammates. No sign of the machines for now. “Okay,” he got out through gulped breaths. “Okay, uh, th-there’s still this edge here. We can go along it, find our way down.”

“Wait,” said Red. Their voice was a hoarse croak. “We—we can’t keep up like this. Clarence and I. It’s not going to work. He’s too weak and my ankle is getting worse.”

“We can switch off,” Pauling said briskly. “Pyro—”

“No, they’re right,” Clarence said, and then broke off coughing.“ There was a terse silence as he tried to catch his breath. ”You’d just be draggin’ us. Me, anyway. I’m—I ain’t gettin’ any better here.“ It was true; his eyes were bloodshot and puffy, and each breath looked like a struggle. Next to him Red was clearly favoring one leg. He hesitated, and then said what Scout was sure everyone else was thinking. ”You gotta leave me behind."

“I’m afraid you’re right,” Pauling said grimly, after a moment. “We’ve got a bit of a lead, we can look for somewhere for you to hide.”

“Are you kidding me?” Pyro said. “How the hell are we going to do that? What if they find him? Fuck me, what if that—that thing finds him? All by himself, do you seriously—”

“I’m going to stay with him,” Red said, and then all three of them burst out, a riot of sharp words and desperate tones. Scout nearly joined in himself when Spy reached into the center of the crowd and snapped his fingers, two, three, four times. Everyone stopped short to glare at him.

“Thank you,” Spy said severely. “I wished only to point out that you are arguing over something with a very simple solution.” As he spoke he had reached into his coat, and produced his silver cigarette case. “I’m sure you’ve stolen this from me enough times to know how it works,” he said to Clarence, one eyebrow raised.

Clarence looked dumbstruck. “I—I mean, yeah, but—”

“Excellent,” he said, pushing it into Red’s free hand. “Take it. I had Engineer look at it before we departed for just this sort of occasion. It will disguise both of you so long as you are touching.”

“But you—oh, God,” Red said, staring stupidly at it. “Thank you—”

“Later,” Spy said, right as Scout cut in with, “We are runnin’ outta time real fast here.”

Behind them there was movement. Still a ways off, but drawing nearer. “Okay,” Pauling said. “Then we’re leaving. We’ll come back for you once we’ve gotten clear. Keep your heads down.”

That was all. They took off. The last Scout saw of the two REDs was a puff of smoke as they opened the disguise kit.

Now they were really moving, along the edge of the cliff and toward a clear valley Scout could now see, and not a moment too late. Behind them, the machines were coming into view, giving the spot they had left Red and Clarence a wide berth as they did. It seemed like their ranks had grown, but even so, the distance between them and the mercenaries was becoming wider and wider, and they were beginning to slope downward again as the trees got denser. He thought he could see a tiny bridge over the river, this close to the cliff’s edge—they could cross it, destroy the bridge, and find another way over when the danger had passed. He began to think they were going to make it out of this after all.

The thought was cut short, abruptly and painfully, when that scream pierced the air again. It seemed to come from everywhere, all at once, but there was no time to look for it before the devil itself came crashing out of the trees beside him.

It seemed, impossibly, even larger than it had been the day before. Its hands slammed the ground three feet from Pyro, who had already swung her flamethrower around and sent a wild burst of flame at its face. The creature shrieked as its face and mane caught fire, along with the needles of the trees it had sprung out from. Even aflame, its snaky neck whipped out and it snapped its massive jaws. The flamethrower was ripped from Pyro’s hands, the momentum sent her reeling—directly off the side of the cliff.

Scout heard her scream, heard Pauling’s hoarse and horrified shout, but he did not quite register it. He did not quite register anything but the devil, rumbling low in its barrel-chest and crackling with flame as the robots caught up with them, turned its attention on Scout.

Somehow his scattergun had leapt to his hands, though it felt slick with his own sweat as he fired an entire round blinding at the thing’s face. The shots barely clipped its shoulder, his hands were shaking so badly. The monster opened its yawning jaws and snarled. Behind the teeth was a tongueless black pit.

Scout didn’t realize its hand had shot out to swat him away like a fly until he was, suddenly, careening off into the air. For an instant he saw the edge of the cliff, and the devil and the robots and Miss Pauling. Then he was falling, and then everything hurt, and everything was cold, and everything went dark.

 

* * *

 

Black.

Scout blinked, and saw nothing, and then saw inky, blurry shapes. He became aware that something was digging into his back. He became aware that he wasn’t wearing a shirt.

Groaning, he tried to lever himself upright on one arm. _Everything_ hurt, his entire body was one massive ache. Dead leaves and twigs and mud stuck to his bare skin. Around him the world started to sharpen. In one direction, half-obscured by trees, he could make out a faint warm light. Everything else was shrouded.

His memory was filtering things down to him now, and he grit his teeth in a rush of panic as he recalled what had happened. The devil, the river—the river. He must have washed up on shore, somehow, though he couldn’t see any water from here. “Miss Pauling?” he called, struggling to his feet. “Spy? Hey, anybody?”

Something rustled behind him, and he turned. His hopes sank. “Anybody else?” he asked Pyro.

Pyro said nothing, watching him dispassionately from between some of the trees nearest the light, which of course was a campfire. As his vision cleared Scout could make out some things hanging over the campfire, hung there by great sticks driven into the ground. No one else was in sight. “Where’re the others?” he said.

“Not here,” Pyro said, and went back to the fire.

She certainly wasn’t lying. Scout followed her, trying to take stock of their surroundings. Not much else was readily apparent, except for the things hanging over the fire. He very quickly recognized them to be his own clothes: his shirt and socks and jacket, and his shoes, tied together by the laces. An uncomfortable chill swept through him. “The _hell_ is this?” he said, jerking a thumb at them.

“Your clothes,” said Pyro.

“Yeah an’ how did they get off me?”

“I took them off. They were wet, and it’s getting cold. Sorry, I didn’t realize you were trying to die from hypothermia.” She had sat back down by the fire, and now held up both of her gloved hands for him to see. “Don’t worry. I wore gloves. I didn’t want to _catch_ anything.”

He remained rooted to the spot for a few seconds, trying to fight off the sense of anger and violation snapping at him. In the end he simply shoved it aside as he stalked to the campfire and snatched his shirt back. Doing so forced the equally uncomfortable realization that his pants were in fact wet, and he was indeed freezing. “Where’s everyone else?” he asked again, starting to pull it and the rest of his clothes on.

“I don’t know,” Pyro said. “I fell off the cliff first, remember?”

“Right yeah okay, yeah, sure, how come _you_ ain’t wet, then?”

She ignored him, prodding the fire with a stick. Scout opened his mouth to keep going, only to cut himself off with a hoarse cough. The air was acrid with the smoke of her fire, she apparently couldn’t even make a smokeless fire. Some pyrotechnician. “Put that shit out, I can’t breathe.”

Pyro only snorted. Scout tied his still-damp jacket around his waist and forced himself to count to ten. “Fine,” he said when he was done. “You are goddamn useless, burn your stupid fire. Hope you choke on it. Where’s the river, I’m outta here.”

Without looking at him, she lifted the stick to point past him, toward where he had awoken. Scout took off without a second thought.

He shoved his way through underbrush and branches, fuming, wondering if maybe hypothermia would have been preferable to the knowledge that she’d put her scarred hands on him. Maybe he’d get lucky and the robots would have gotten to her by the time he found Miss Pauling and everyone and gone back for her. If they went back for her at all. Maybe he just wouldn’t mentioned he’d seen her.

He would find the river, he decided, and then he’d be able to get his bearings and figure out where to go. He couldn’t be that far from the others. There was no doubt in his mind his teammates had escaped unscathed. Miss P and Clarence and Spy and Red, all of them would be fine.

Another five minutes’ forging ahead and he could see the trees thinning out, and the edge of a muddy shore. There was a kind of distant rushing noise he thought must be the river, and light, too; it must be the last dregs of the sunset. He hadn’t lost much time at all. Scout pushed his way forward, nearly slipped once, and stopped on the bank at the water’s edge.

It was a broad, black river and it moved like a live thing. From where he stood it seemed much more vast than it had looked from the cliff’s edge, but perhaps that was because the cliff was—as near as he could tell, from what he was now realizing the opposite bank—a good hundred feet in the air. It was too dark to make out much of the cliff’s face. He would not have noticed it even if it hadn’t been, because at the top of the cliff, everything was on fire.

That was the light. That was the light, a solid sheet of flame rising yards and yards in the air, feasting on every tree that had stood there, every shrub. Even if there had been sun, the tower of black smoke swallowing up the sky would have blotted it out.

He broke off coughing again, harder this time as the smoke clawed again at his throat. He was still coughing when the bushes shook behind him, just audible over the roar of the flames and the rush of the river, and from them Pyro emerged.

She didn’t say anything as she came to a stop next to him, just looking up at the fire with her hands in her pockets. Scout wished she would, wished she’d do something to warrant his anger. Instead all he managed to do was ask, “Did—did you do that?”

She laughed, a sound like dead leaves in the wind. “I think I did. Yeah. When we were running.”

“J—Jesus. Jesus _Christ_ …”

“I guess so, anyway. I was hanging off the side of the cliff. I don’t … I don’t _think_ it’ll reach us here, tonight. I found a foot bridge—you were washed up on this little island in the middle. That’s how I got across. But I destroyed it so the fire couldn’t reach this side.”

“Well. Well, we—shit, we can’t jus’ be standin’ around like jackasses, then, we gotta go find the rest of ’em.”

“How the hell are we supposed to do that? I just told you I destroyed the bridge. And I don’t know what happened to them. They might be dead, Scout.”

“They ain’t dead,” he snapped. “Fuck off. It ain’t that big a river—”

“What, you want to walk into that?” Pyro said, gesturing to the inferno above. “Do you know anything about forest fires? The _air_ would kill us before we even got close. It’s superheated, it melts the inside of your lungs.”

“Yeah? Yeah, you know so much about it, how many people you killed that way?”

He did not so much get the flicker of pain in her face that he was hunting for. Instead she pressed her thumb and forefinger against her eyes, hard, and said, “Okay. You’re going to be an idiot about it. Fine. I’m going back to camp.”

 

* * *

 

In another five minutes Scout was shouldering his way through bushes and waist-high grass, trying to follow the shoreline in hopes of finding the bridge Pyro had spoken of. He was a strong swimmer, and he was confident he could make it across. It was impossibly thick going, though, and he found himself wishing for Sniper, or at least Sniper’s machete.

No matter how far he got, the fire seemed to stay exactly as large. He kept trying not to look at it, but that was proving impossible, because it was just so big. He was actually having a hard time wrapping his mind around it. He’d heard about forest fires, seen black-and-white photos in schoolbooks, and back before Coldfront Engineer had once told him about how in the country they’d do controlled burns to maintain the land. They’d stretch from horizon to horizon sometimes, he’d said, but Scout couldn’t imagine they’d been anything like this. The entire far bank seemed to be swallowed up. The further he got, the more he had to admit to himself Pyro had probably been right.

Eventually the undergrowth blocked his way entirely, a dense network of roots and branches and frustratingly strong weeds, impassable. Stopping, it occurred to him that he was not even sure of what direction he was going. He fished into his pocket for his compass.

It was not there. He froze, and then searched through the rest of his clothes for it only to find nothing. His pack was gone, too. Everything but the clothes on his back, and his dog tags, and his brother’s lighter.

Before he knew what he was doing he was retracing his steps, moving too fast, stumbling more often than not. When he reached Pyro’s camp she did not even look at him, not until he barked out, “Where’s my compass?” When she did look up, all he could see of her face was the scarred half. It looked for all the world like she was sneering at him. “You took it, didn’t you, what, thought you’d get yourself another trophy? Give it back.”

Now she was definitely sneering at him. “I didn’t take your compass.”

“Then where the hell is it?”

“Probably at the bottom of the river. Maybe you should go look for it there.” She looked back into the fire. “Idiot.”

A second later she was on her feet, because Scout had crossed to her and yanked her up by her collar. “I ain’t gonna put up with your _shit_ , okay,” he growled, and felt every hair on the back of his neck prickling. “You give it _back_ , or I—”

She slugged him, a sharp right hook across the nose. Scout reeled, nearly recovered, and then slipped in the dirt as Pyro jumped him.

It was a short, silent struggle. Hand-to-hand Pyro fought dirty, fought like an animal, clawing and kicking and biting and going for anything tender. She was heavier than him, pinning him to the forest floor, but she’d left his arms free, she had no strategy. A solid crack of his forehead against her nose stunned her and won him a pained yelp. It turned into a torrent of cursing when his hand shot out to get a fistful of her hair. He jerked her head backwards, drove his knee up into her stomach. A sickening gasp, and then he had her on her back, had one arm bearing down hard on her throat.

She choked, thrashed, scrabbled. Scout had found himself a single-minded purpose, crushing her windpipe, and it was the only thing he could see. It consumed him so entirely that he didn’t catch Pyro gathering herself back together until she threw her elbow into his face. It caught him in the teeth and he cried out in pain, and then Pyro had taken advantage of her weight again to roll him again, onto his back—right into the fire.

He barely realized that she was holding him down before the embers took hold. There was a shriek he thought was maybe his, and a struggle and agony and his skin was melting and the look on her face as she held him down, stared him in the eyes, was as close to pure hatred as he had ever seen.

And then he was out of the flames, limp on the ground, and he could not move. He could not have said if he’d gotten out on his own or if Pyro had just decided he’d had enough; she was sprawled a few feet away on her hands and knees, gasping and clutching her nose. Blood soaked her glove. For some reason it was this detail he noticed more than anything else.

Then there was pain, and he felt like he was going to gag. Every movement was torture, pulling the torched skin around. He became aware of the tears rolling down his face around the same time he became aware that he was speaking, his words broken by the occasional whimper. “You f-fuckin‘—murderin’ bitch—always _knew_ , knew you were just _waitin’_ for your chance—”

“If I wanted to kill you I would have left you in the river,” Pyro said thickly, trying to stem her bloody nose. Scout was pretty sure he’d broken it, for all the good that did him now. “I should have,” she spat. “I should have left you there to die! I could have drowned you myself! I wish I _had_! I should’ve—I … I …”

She said no more, gritting her teeth and squeezing her eyes shut. There was a puddle of blood on the dirt beneath her. It was all Scout could do to keep breathing without crying out. Soon the only remaining sound was the crackle of the fire, and their ragged breathing, and the night birds slowly deciding it was safe to sing again.

 

* * *

 

Scout had begun crying again when he tried to pull his shirt off. The fabric had clung stubbornly to his charred flesh, ripping some of it away as he did. When he looked at the hole, trying to get an idea of how large the damage was and finding with a jolt of horror that it was the size of his hand with the fingers spread out, he could not decide if the black stuff stuck to it was his skin or just bits from the fire.

Scout had thought he’d known about pain. He had thought he’d known it forward and backward, from years with BLU, and he did: he knew all about getting shot and exploded and stabbed. Fire, though. If Red had ever gotten close enough to give him a burn this size, he was already as good as dead. He knew about pain. He didn’t know much at all about burns.

He had hoped the pain might start to die down. It did, sort of, but so did the rest of him. He wondered if he was going into shock. He had managed to crawl away from the fire, at least, and now lay flat on his stomach, trying not to move. He kept thinking about Clarence, and how Pyro had held the burning axe-head to the stump of his arm. Clarence had eventually passed out. He hoped he would do the same.

No darkness came, though. Every time he thought he might slip away something jarred him back into wakefulness, either from his own movement, or from a noise in the trees, or—at the last—Pyro, who had wiped the last of the blood off her face and crossed to him. He saw this only from the corner of his eye, and his stomach turned, he tried to shy away, fresh fear surging through him. She had noticed his helplessness, she had decided to make good on her wish from a few minutes ago, and when she put one hand flat on his back he was certain he was about to die. “Don’t,” he got out, “f-fuck, fuck you, leave me alone—”

“Shut up,” she snapped. A moment later he felt something trickle over his back, over the burn, and it was agony. He cried out and tried to struggle, only for her to push down on his back harder. “I am _trying_ to _help you_ , for God’s sake.”

“It _hurts_!”

“That’s because it’s disinfectant.”

“I don’t—I don’t want your help—”

“Do you want to look like this when it heals?” Pyro demanded, pointing at her own face.

It was not even Scout’s own bias that Pyro’s scars were unpleasant to behold. It was the simple truth. Nearly half her face was a mass of wrinkled scars and badly-healed tissue, alternatingly dark and light. It had mostly done away with the hair of her eyebrow and a chunk of her scalp, and forced her eye into a perpetual near-squint. It was a hard thing to look at, and Scout could only manage it for a few seconds before tearing his eyes away. “… You’re the one pushed me in the fire,” he managed eventually.

“And now I’m trying to fix it. Hold still.”

Whatever she did next hurt enough that Scout lost any reply he might have had. It took her maybe five minutes, and he had no idea what she was doing, just that he was in pain. “This is going to blister,” she said eventually.

“Great. Thanks.”

“Well, screw me, Scout, maybe if you had believed me instead of deciding that I took your shit, this might not have happened,” Pyro said, ripping off a length of gauze she had produced from somewhere. “Did that ever occur to you? Or have you seriously—” Scout bit his tongue, hard, as she applied it to his back with much less delicacy than he would have liked, “—not gotten the God-damn _memo_ that I spend most of my time trying to stay away from you?”

He hardly heard her. He had dug his fingers into the dirt with the pain. “Then—then what’d you even go s, savin’ me for?”

He got no answer, not at first. Just another rough pressure from the gauze, the brush of her bloodied gloves against him. “There,” she said, getting up and leaving Scout only with a view of her boots. “All better. Shut up and go to sleep.”

He had nothing to say. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway; it would have been lost when she dumped something over his head. Fumbling with it, he found it was a blanket. He managed to shift himself around as she walked away, clutching it to himself, desperate for warmth.

Neither of them said anything else that night, save for an occasional cough from the smokey air. Soon Pyro smothered the fire, and the only remaining light was the distant blaze. For Scout, sleep never really came, between the throb of his injury and the hard ground and the way his thoughts kept drifting aimlessly, to better times, to happier days. To home.


	19. 16: THE TULGEY WOOD

* * *

 

 

  
  


 

 

 

 

 

**OCTOBER 2ND, 1960, LATE AFTERNOON  
** **JUST OUTSIDE BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS**

“So, so like, what, we gonna catch squirrels? Eat ‘em? My book here it says somethin’ ‘bout skinnin’ things, I think, lemme grab it—”

“We ain’t gonna eat squirrels, nitwit,” Tobias said, but Jeremiah had already slung off his backpack to tear through it for the handbook. “I brought all’a the food, ain’t like we’re gonna be out here more’n a day or so. Ma’ll think we ran away again.”

“Aw, Ma worries too much.”

It was unseasonably warm, the October when Tobias dropped out of high school. He was allowed, he was seventeen and the truancy officers couldn’t touch him anymore. Ma had raised a fuss, of course she had, but Toby had talked her down one way or another. All he had told Jeremiah was, “Ain’t gotta know about all them dead presidents if I get scouted, right?”

Jeremiah, on the other hand, had just been suspended again. This time he had put Richard Dewey in the hospital.

But Tobias was still out of school for good, and that was exciting, so he had planned a little camping trip just because, just for him and Jeremiah. Roger and Sidney were supposed to come, but they were busy, and Henry was off at college, and Thomas and Ross had lives of their own and all, and Anna wouldn’t have wanted to come even if she hadn’t eloped years ago, and Liam—

Well, it wasn’t as if Tobias would have invited Liam anyway, even if he hadn’t been in prison.

So it was just Toby and J, same as it ever was. Jeremiah liked it that way just fine.

Around them the wind was rustling its way through the trees and dying bushes, skimming through his hair as he dug out his hand-me-down Boy Scout handbook. They huddled over it for a few minutes, nearly walking into trees a few times, trying to find out if it had any wisdom for them. It did not, in fact, have any information about skinning squirrels, but it did talk about edible mushrooms. Neither of them really liked mushrooms, but Tobias thought maybe they could find some chestnuts and see what those tasted like, and there might still be some wild blackberries to be had.

The riotous color of the woods would be one of the things Jeremiah most remembered about the trip, later, the blazing fire-colors of fall. He tore down leaves by the handful as they steadily made their way through brush and bramble, over fallen logs and up muddy slopes. Upward was their direction, always climbing, because Tobias had said his friend had said there was a spot up here somewhere you could see clear across Boston. Jeremiah didn’t know if he believed that, on account of Boston being just about the size of the ocean, but Tobias seemed to think it was worth checking out. It was a pretty hard climb either way, at least for city boys used to concrete and chain-link.

At intervals Jeremiah would stop and scrape marks into the trees, trail blazes. The forest was thick and cool and there was something grounding about the minute or two each more would take him. He’d nearly fallen into a rhythm with it when Tobias said, “Hey, but I thought your whole dumb Boy Scouts thing was big on not leavin’ no trace.”

“Yeah, well, you wanna get lost? I ain’t ever been out here before an’ Roger broke my compass. S’different, bein’ out in the woods and just bein’ lost.”

“You have never been lost a day in your life, you are like a bloodhound but with maps.”

Jeremiah grinned. “Yeah, yeah. Hey, look, the top’s just up there, see the trees clearin’ out?”

Tobias looked. “Seems like.”

“Race ya!”

Like a gunshot they both went tearing up the hill Jeremiah ahead with Tobias close on his heels, yelling. Up, up, over the slowly leveling slope, and Jeremiah could outrun everybody he knew, but what Tobias lacked in speed he made up for in dirty tricks. He caught up just long enough to grab Jeremiah’s backpack and haul him off-balance, sending him careening to the side. He was scrambling to recover when Tobias reached the top and crowed, beaming down at him as he trotted up. Jeremiah shoved him and he laughed. “No sore losers!”

“I ain’t lost, you cheated, hockey players, all you guys does is cheat!”

“Ain’t cheatin’ if the ref don’t foul you,” Tobias said, but Jeremiah waved him off, not really bothered. He would have done the same thing. “Man, but I think Lenny might’a been pulling my leg, though. I can’t see nothin’ except trees.”

Looking around, Jeremiah had to agree with him. Trees and more trees, if more widely spaced here at the crest of the hill, waving gently in the breeze and flashing the sun off their golden leaves. It was beautiful, to be sure, but he’d never really been a forest kind of person. Cities were more straightforward, full of people. Someone always had your back in a city.

Something caught his eye as he scanned the trees, sticking up high above the branches some ways to the east. “Is that what he meant, maybe?” he said, pointing. When Tobias turned to look he would find a sky-blue tower rising an easy six stories into the air, all metal and railings. “It’s real tall, anyway, even if he didn’t I bet we could see everything from up there.”

“That’s, what, that’s one’a those lookout towers, right?” Tobias said, shading his eyes with his hand to get a better look. “Where they watch for fires? Maybe it is, yeah. Let’s go see.”

 

* * *

 

**OCTOBER, 1971  
** **CHIPPEWA NATIONAL FOREST, MINNESOTA**

Scout awoke with a huge gasp, followed instantly by a frail whimper. At first he could not comprehend where he was or why he was so much in pain, and stared idiotically at the muddy mix of leaves and stones directly in front of him. Every breath lanced new pain through him, and it was some minutes before he could even bring himself to try sitting upright. When he did it was slow and shaky. He gulped down the cold morning air like water.

Finally upright, he pawed at his eyes and tried to get his bearings. Light out, barely. Dew clung to the fallen leaves. His lips were chapped and sore. It was strangely quiet; every other morning so far he had awoken to birdsong.

He looked up and found the pillar of smoke still blocking out half the sky.

Smoke, fire. The remains of a campfire, thoroughly smothered with dirt, lay a few feet away. His shoulder throbbed. Pyro was nowhere in sight, though her bag was lying on the ground near the campfire.

It took him a while, but eventually he got to his feet. The blanket Pyro had left with him was tangled around his ankles and it took some doing to free them. It took longer for him to gingerly pull his burned shirt back on, and by the time he had the bushes had parted and Pyro appeared. She ignored him, and he returned the favor, or he did right up until she had shouldered her bag and started walking purposefully away. “Hey—hey, where’re you going?”

She acted like she hadn’t heard him, moving further off through the trees and forcing him to hurry after her. Each step sent waves of disorientation through him, each breath was sharp and pained. “I said—I said hey! What’re you, deaf? Don’t—”

Scout froze as she stopped dead directly in front of him and turned, and he hadn’t realized until now that she still had her axe, which was now in her right hand. “I’m getting out of here before the fire catches up to me,” she said, in a voice as thin and sharp as a razor. “And you know what? I don’t think you’re in good enough shape to be treating me like garbage. So if you’re going to come with me, you should think about watching your mouth.”

“Or, or what, you’ll axe me? That your big plan?” he said, though with less bravado than he would have liked.

Pyro gave him a flat, stark look, and laughed. “This?” she said, shifting her weight and hefting the axe. “This is for robots. I don’t need this to handle you now.” She tilted her head to one side. “How’s your back?”

Scout grit his teeth. Even that small motion made him want to sit down and never get up again.

 

* * *

 

The air seemed to be getting worse and worse. The third time Scout had to stop and start coughing, it actually forced tears to his eyes. Ahead of him Pyro did not stop, still forging steadily through the underbrush.

He had been trailing behind Pyro for maybe a mile and a half now. She was loosely following the river, heading east, but this seemed to be her only plan. She wasn’t marking her trail, checking her direction, anything. In spite of his injury Scout had found himself stopping every so often to carve a blaze into the soft bark of the aspens they were moving through, using a sharp-edged rock. It was getting harder every time. He had just finished another one when the tickle in his throat made him stop and hack into the crook of his elbow again. “Hey,” he called out. His voice was a croak. “Hey, d’you even know where you’re going? ‘Cause, because we ain’t gettin’ any closer to where we lost the others.”

She had, at least, stopped when he spoke. Now she was picking burrs off her clothes, and said nothing until he caught up with her. “I’m looking for a way across the river.”

“What the hell’s wrong with goin’ back the way you crossed?”

“Well, first of all, I destroyed the bridge. And there’s kind of the fact that everything behind us is on fire.”

Scout scowled, glancing over his shoulder, and was not able to ignore the tower of smoke above them. “Well—fine. Then how’re we gettin’ across the river, you’re so smart?”

Pyro just started walking again. Scout glared at her back. “Could’a swum it,” he went on, loudly, “could’a, except for the fact I got this nice goddamn burn not lettin’ me so much as get my damn arm over my head, wonder whose fault that is. Would’a been me taken care of, anyway, you can’t swim none, can you? RED’d always push you in the water.”

No answer. Scout found he was too fatigued to keep talking.

They went on in silence again for another mile or so. Scout’s trail blazes got further and further apart: lifting his arm to cut them into the bark was deceptively draining. When Pyro finally stopped walking in a little clearing absolutely carpeted with scruffy ferns, it was a relief; he dropped down as soon as she did, breathing hard. She dug out one of those military rations and began to eat, and he had to stop watching almost immediately. He was hungry as anything, and even MREs sounded appetizing. But she offered him nothing, and he did not ask.

She was done sooner than he wanted, even as hungry as he was. She ate things like he’d seen stray dogs eat things back home, wolfing whatever she had down indiscriminately and with unreal speed, like she was afraid someone was going to take it away from her. Then she was up and moving again, and it took Scout fully a minute to lever himself back to his feet to follow her.

They were veering closer to the river’s edge now, and the dirt was damper, more slippery. The going got slower as they had to pick their way through thickets and soft earth, and more than once Pyro’s pack got hung up on something. Scout was beginning to get dizzy, but with some unreasonable doggedness he kept scratching his blazes into the trees. He had been midway through another one when a sharp pain shot through his leg—a cramp—and dropped him, hard. “Shit!”

He fell right on his ass and on his elbow, too, for good measure. It would have hurt enough even if it hadn’t sent more shocks of pain radiating through his back and neck from the burn. Ahead of him Pyro stopped, turning to look him over dispassionately. She said nothing as he slowly picked himself up, and went right back on walking as soon as she saw he was on his feet again. Scout was too tired and hungry to even cuss at her as he followed.

So: he was worn out, injured, ravenous, and covered in mud, and he was pretty sure it wasn’t even noon yet. This was too much. “Hey,” he called again, pressing himself to walk a little faster. “What’re, what’re you lookin’ for even? Do you even know?”

She had paused, at least, one hand on the trunk of a young ash tree as she looked over her shoulder at him. “No,” she said. “Just anything useful.”

“Oh my God. You don’t know? You, you been draggin’ me all down this stupid riverbank all day and you don’t even got a plan? Shit! We could’a stayed right where we was and waited for the fire to go by and found another way back where you came over in the first place. It wasn’t even comin’ toward us, it was all west of us.”

Finally, finally she did something besides stare at him apathetically: she shut her eyes, rubbing at one with the heel of her palm. When she opened them again she glanced around, as if looking for this unknown useful thing she had spoken of. None appeared. “We shouldn’t have even stayed where we were for the night. It was that dangerous. The wind could have changed and we would’ve been dead,” she snapped her fingers, “just like that. Staying any longer would have been asking for trouble.”

Given the chance, Scout let himself sit, gingerly rubbing at his cramping leg. “Well—but we could’a stayed on the bank.”

“I told you. It’s not the fire that kills you, it’s the air.”

“How the hell do you know?”

She just looked at him. But this time she looked him up and down, then away with a resigned sort of sigh. “Because I know. Are you planning on being a martyr and just going hungry, or what?”

The topic change put him off-balance. “I ain’t—I ain’t askin’ you for handouts.”

This was answered with a low sigh. A moment later she had pulled out a piece of jerky from the pack and dropped it into Scout’s lap.

He could not help himself, he was starving. He dove upon it with entirely more desperation than he was comfortable with, tearing off half of it in one bite. It was gone in seconds. When he looked up again she was already holding out another one to him, giving him a long-suffering, expectant look.

Grudgingly, he took it. “Well,” he said eventually, chewing more slowly this time, “so we’re probably looking for a crossing.”

“Mm-hm.”

“You got a plan for after that?”

 

* * *

 

“Not really,” Pyro said, thinking about it. Planning was not exactly her strong suit. “Find the others. Get out. Don’t get killed.”

Scout looked off toward the river, and for a second Pyro let her gaze linger on the jerky she’d given him. It felt like a waste. Sharing wasn’t her strong suit, either. “I mean, I guess that’s a plan. Ain’t much’a one, but whatever, it’s a start.”

The fact Scout was speaking to her like he didn’t want to string her guts on a clothesline was, somehow, much more unnerving than she would have expected. Something about it made her tense and angry. She studied him now and unless she was wildly wrong he looked almost thoughtful. He exhaled and he shifted, looking off toward the river, which was just scarcely visible through the barren trees. “From where we was yesterday we should’a been goin’ southwest, to get out. River hasn’t bent all that much, so I figure probably we’ve been goin’ the opposite, goin’ west and a little north … you said there was a bridge back there?” She nodded. “So, okay, but if there was a bridge there, means there’s been people around here, an’ maybe means there could be another bridge across down this way … ugh. Shit, I dunno. We are gonna get murdered by robots. Couldn’t we just go back? The stuff that’s already burned has gotta be safe, right?”

“Well,” Pyro said, and hesitated. “Yeah, mostly. But from down here I can’t tell how the fire’s spreading. It could be coming toward us or moving away, and if we get too close we won’t be able to outrun it.”

“Maybe you can’t.”

“I’m not the one with an open wound,” she shot back. “Big fires are like wild animals. They’re unpredictable and they’ll kill you as soon as look at you.”

“So they’re kinda like you?” Scout said dully.

It took her a moment to process the meaning of his words. When she did she got up, wordlessly, and started back down the river’s edge. She could hear Scout hissing to himself and scrambling after her, and she walked faster as her nails bit deep into the flesh of her palms.

They kept moving down the riverbank, getting further and further from where they had lost the others. The day seemed to stretch out forever, and the constant whisper of the water in her ear made it hard for her to focus. Her legs ached, she felt greasy and sore all over, and the socket of her left arm still hurt from catching herself on the cliff face the day before.

A few times she saw rabbits, and once, high overhead, she glimpsed some massive bird drifting on thermals. She saw no signs of robots, or of the monster. But no bridge ever appeared, either.

Night was falling when she heard a yelp and a crash behind her, and turned to see Scout had fallen and landed in a bush. He fought with it for a few seconds, trying and failing to lever himself out, and when this proved fruitless he went limp. “This is stupid,” he said, staring down into the bare branches. “I mean this is grade-A _idiotic._ We don’t got any idea where we are freakin’ going, and we don’t even know if the others are still alive or if there’s robots or that—that goddamn monster could pop outta the woods outta nowhere again, God—”

Pyro rolled her eyes and leaned against a tree to wait for him to finish his tantrum. He carried on like that, as she knew he would, periodically trying to get back onto his feet. “—can’t cross the river an’ half the forest’s literally on fire, an’ that’s your freakin’ fault, and we are gonna run outta food at this rate and you _burned me_ and I hurt everywhere and I can’t, can’t even walk right, and I am stuck out here with _you_!” He had finally freed himself from the bush, and now looked to her. In the fading light she could make out angry red scratches all along his arms and his pale, drawn face. She could find his expression in the half-dark, too: his mouth a bewildered slash across his face, deep furrows in his brow. A hunted sort of stare. He looked at her as though she had been the one to push him to the ground.

“You done?” she said.

“Am I—” Scout started, and his face twisted into something more familiar to her. An all-over bristling, an intimidation. Nothing about him could scare her now, though. Not like this, not when he was dirty and wet and full of impotent anger. Something about the sight reminded her, sharply and unexpectedly, of herself, and she grimaced, putting a hand over her eyes in some vain attempt to protect herself. She was still trying to bury the thought when Scout said, “I’m—I’m going back.”

She forced herself to look at him again. He was shivering. “You’ll die,” she said.

“Yeah, well, and you’re gonna try and kill me sooner or later if I stay, so I figure my chances are about even either way,” he said as he untied the jacket from around his waist and carefully pulled it on. “So fuck you, Pyro, I hope you fall in the river and drown.”

She was not expecting the venom in her voice when she answered. “Fine,” she spat, pushing off the tree as Scout zipped up the jacket. “Great, go get killed, the world will be a better place. Tell Tobias I said hello.”

By now it was dark, and Scout had already turned his back on her. She could not see his face anymore. What she could see was the way he froze with his hand on a low-hanging branch, just for a second, and how his grip tightened on the wood. Then he let go, walking off toward the dim and distant glow of the fire.

 

* * *

 

**OCTOBER 2ND, 1960, EARLY EVENING  
** **JUST OUTSIDE BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS**

The tower was maybe five minutes’ walk out, which they spent chattering idly about this and that, about ballgame scores and Jeremiah’s teachers and about the hockey scouters Tobias had been talking to—about whether or not they were serious. “I wouldn’t’a quit school if I didn’t figure they was serious,” Tobias said, toying with the dog tags that jangled softly around his neck. “Whole reason, I mean, ‘sides from all the suspensions, an’ how I ain’t no good at chemistry.”

“What was that last one even about, huh, you ain’t deserved no suspensions. Oughta be suspendin’ the other guy, is what they oughta be doin’, he deserved it anyway.”

“Sure he did, but I knew goin’ in I was gonna get into some shit over it. We got a reputation for a reason, man,” he laughed. “Nah. I weren’t ever meant much for schoolin’ anyways, that was always Henry’s bag. And if the hockey thing don’t work out I’ll just find somethin’ else. There’s always something needs doing. Get on the docks with Roger, maybe, I dunno. But, hey, that one lady was talkin’ about me goin’ to Minnesota for that league they’re puttin’ together. That’s practically Canada, the way I hear it.”

Jeremiah did not want to hear about Minnesota. The idea of Tobias going to Minnesota made him feel sort of sick, actually, but by now they’d reached the tower and the conversation petered out. It seemed much, much higher up close, almost absurdly so, to the point where he felt a little dizzy craning his neck back to see the top. The metal looked thin and rusty, and the whole structure swayed in the breeze. Tobias was working at the chain that blocked the stairway off, or he was until he snorted and just stepped over it with his impossibly long legs instead. He yelled and latched onto the handrail for balance when Jeremiah scooted under the chain and bolted past him. “Hey, watch it—”

“Last one up’s a Yankee!”

Well, none of the Owens boys could have resisted bait like that. He heard Tobias’s feet pounding the metal behind him as they dashed up the steps with a clang and a clatter and the squeak of rubber soles. Beneath them the trees shrunk down into the earth, dwarfed by the tower.

He reached the top five steps before his brother did, and got a punch to the shoulder as his prize. “Even?” Tobias asked, panting.

Jeremiah grinned. “Even.”

“Damn Yank. Hey, but, look, though. You were right.”

Jeremiah shrugged off his pack, stretched, and turned. Tobias was leaning on the guard rail, looking out over the trees.

Jeremiah could see first the ocean, a vast unbroken line from horizon to horizon, still as a painting. And under that, nearer, Boston, splayed out as a cat lies in the sun. From the fire tower he could see all of it, every familiar inch. He thought he could just make out their neighborhood of Sunrise, even, far to the right. “Pretty, huh?” Tobias said.

Jeremiah shrugged, unsure. He joined his brother, picking at some of the flecking blue paint on the rusting guard rail. “I guess.”

“Just guess?”

“I dunno. It don’t look right, is all. It’s too—I dunno. It don’t feel like home from here, not really.”

He shut up before he could say anything else, too aware of the silence his words left behind. At once he was itching to fill the space, to draw attention away from the growing discomfort in his gut. Before he could, Tobias made a contemplative kind of sounds. “Yeah, sure. Like those model cities in the pictures, right? All them monster movies.”

“Like that.”

“We stick around long enough, maybe King Kong’ll come around, that’d be somethin’. What if—”

“It ain’t gonna feel like home if you go to fuckin’ Minnesota, neither,” Jeremiah said, and instantly wished he hadn’t. The silence came back in force, worse than before, and despite himself he couldn’t help but glance up at Tobias from the corner of his eye.

Tobias was still looking off over the forest toward home. “I mean,” he said, eventually, “I can’t stick around here forever, J. Ain’t how things go. I love you, man, but I’m not gonna put my life on hold for you.”

“I know that.”

“You know that but you keep draggin’ this back up, though.” Jeremiah grimaced. “Just, ever since I told you I might be leavin‘. Kinda clingy, man. We’re growin’ up.”

“I am not _clingy_ ,” Jeremiah muttered, an unwelcome surge of hostility flooding through him. He leaned heavy on the guard rail, only to step back when it creaked dangerously. But Tobias was still leaning on it, too, and so he went right back to it. “I just … what am I gonna do, though? What, hang out with Sid and Roger? They ain’t never liked me, you _know_ they ain’t never liked me.”

“That ain’t true.”

“Is too! They think—they’re just like everyone else. They think I’m gonna turn out just like Liam did.”

Tobias cut a look at him, hard to see in the fading light, but it was not a pleasant one. Jeremiah met it, feeling a kind of desperation lurking around the corners of his words. “You just, Toby you don’t got a clue sometimes, you don’t. You spend so much time wantin’ to believe in other people that you don’t see ’em for what they are! You think everybody’s got this good side in them, fine, where’s Liam’s good side? Where’s the good side in somebody that murders his girlfriend?”

“You sound just like those fuckin’ cops,” Tobias said darkly. “God. _Murder,_ I can’t believe I am hearin’ this. It was an _accident_.”

“This is what I’m fuckin’ talkin’ about!” Jeremiah barked, wrapping both hands around the guard rail. It cut into his hands, cold and sharp. “Chrissakes, Toby, what is wrong with you? Liam’s—Liam’s always been bad, he’s always gonna be bad, you know what he’s like! We—we both know,” he finished, all the steam suddenly gone out of him. “We always knew. And people, they look at me and they just see him. Even Ma, you know that too. You’re the only one who doesn’t.”

The sun had set, now. The air was chilly with the wind, and it was black out, but Jeremiah still stared at the patch of darkness he knew to be his brother’s face. Tobias sighed, after too long a pause. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

Jeremiah swallowed, looking back out over the city. Somewhere he heard a bird calling, a distant wild sound. “I just,” he started, and stopped. “I don’t wanna lose the only person who doesn’t think I’m no good. I don’t wanna know what I’d turn into if I did.”


	20. 17: CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER

* * *

 

 

  
  


 

 

 

These were not ideal conditions. Ash, smoke, excess heat. The robot could withstand heat well—better than many of its comrades—but the fire was still a danger. Already once a smoking branch had crashed down on its back as it made its way through the smoldering trees, dumping ash over its cameras. This had not been an environment taken into account in its design specs.

But still the robot pushed forward, crushing fallen logs underfoot. Its thermal register had been throwing false positives since the fire, rendering it all but useless. Even before the fire it had been difficult to utilize in the forest, full of animals. More than once the machine had wound up trailing a herd of deer instead of its actual targets.

Onward, though. It had received the updated intelligence communicated by the reconnaissance machines before they were lost in the blaze, which in turn had given rise to new orders. It had been recalled to headquarters for its new cargo and markers and then sent out, moving at double time to try and head its targets off. It had redirected and rerouted and had, at last, found its objectives, fleeing deer notwithstanding. And as it was, the deer had been a blessing in disguise: if it had found its route sooner it would have been consumed in the fire as well. This was much more advantageous. A golden opportunity had arisen.

Traversing the untouched landscape was a welcome change, now that it had passed the flames. Within a few hours the passes of its thermal register revealed a single target, moving directly toward it at a slow rate. The robot altered its course. It could not be seen too early.

The target seemed to be having trouble maintaining a steady pace, stopping often. It gave the machine time to pick its locale and plan its entrance. It found an ideal spot behind a mossy clump of rock and a fallen tree, and waited.

The crunch of human footsteps on broken branches. Unsteady, heavy breathing. The robot remained motionless until the last possible second. When it stepped out from its cover, its microphones registered a gasp and the sound of someone falling to the ground, followed by a sharp, high yelp.

The robot stopped just short of where the Builders’ League United Scout lay flat on his back. His vital signs had ratcheted up and his mouth gaped open. He did not move from where he had landed, only staring straight up at the sky.

These were ideal conditions.

Static hissed out of the speakers hidden in the robot’s armor. In a tinny, unnatural voice, it spoke. “Where is your teammate?”

No response. Scout gingerly pushed himself up. One hand groped blindly over his shoulder, as if feeling for something on his back.

“Where is your teammate?” the machine repeated.

Finally Scout looked at it. His breath was labored and shallow. “Did … oh, God, that h-hurts. Did you say that? Y—you’re the thing killed Spy. Oh, God. You’re the thing that killed Spy and you can talk.”

“Where is your teammate?”

Scout opened his mouth, shut it, opened it again. “Why? So’s you can go kill her, too?”

The machine was silent.

Scout stayed where he was a few seconds longer before carefully levering himself to his feet, never taking his eyes off the machine. It matched his gaze with the unblinking lights behind the bars protecting its cameras. Now it took stock of Scout himself: no visible weapon, no visible resources. He held himself stiffly, moving as little as possible with his face screwed up in pain. He was red in the face and about the eyes. And he seemed a little more sure of himself when he was standing again, but made no move to run. “God,” he muttered, looking the robot over again. Upright, its shoulders came up to his chest. “Oh, Jesus. You are just huge. If I—if I tell you where she went, uh, you’ll. You’ll let me go? Yeah?”

“You will take me to her.”

His face contorted again. “I ain’t … I don’t know where she is exactly. I can point ya—”

“You will take me to her,” the robot said, taking a step forward.

“Whoa, whoa, okay. Okay. Easy there. Shit. You, you ain’t much for talkin’, huh.” He pawed at his eyes. “Okay, um. Are you gonna kill us? Is that what this is?”

“If I wanted to kill you,” the robot said, “you would already be dead.”

 

* * *

  

Pyro wished she had a cigarette. She had been drinking from her canteen more than usual since Scout’s departure. It wasn’t doing much to get the bad taste out of her mouth.

Approximately an hour had passed since Scout had run off on his own. Or, so Pyro thought. What did she know? She wouldn’t even damn know which way she was headed, if not for the distant glow of the flames behind her, and the river at her right. But still: she walked. She would get through it. She would stay alive. It was one of the few things she was really good at, for better or for worse.

Right now, though, she was beginning to get tired. She had become used to the short spurts of running that BLU required of her, and the long stints of walking her pre-BLU life had mandated were a thing of the past. Her legs hurt, her chest, her back, everything was sore. She missed the comforting weight of her flamethrower, which had tumbled into the river when she had fallen. All she had now was an axe, and she’d never been good with the stupid thing.

Either way, she wasn’t going to get out of the woods tonight. At least she wouldn’t have to worry about Scout, she supposed. If he went off and died on his own that wasn’t her problem, and she might actually be able to get some sleep this evening instead of turning over every fifteen minutes to ensure Scout hadn’t snuck up on her. Not that he could, really, with a burn like that. Pyro knew all too well what a bad burn did to your ability to function.

She slowed to a stop. Everything looked exactly the same as it had six hours ago, just in a slightly different arrangement beneath her flashlight. Suddenly exhausted, she flicked it off, and turned around.

The fire was a distant haze. She let her gaze settle on it, watching the faint bright dance and smelling the smoke. She could just … walk toward it. Toward the flames. She didn’t know where she was going, after all, or how deep the forest was. That would at least give her a fixed destination. Her palms began to itch.

She wasn’t that tired, yet. She stepped toward the light.

“Hey! Hey, Pyro!”

She froze in her tracks, yanked out of her head at the sound of Scout’s voice and of something crashing through the bushes. On and up went the flashlight, catching Scout in its narrow beam, but this caught her attention less than the six blue lights blazing in the darkness at his side.

She cussed, eyes going wide as she recognized the guard dog robot, and turned to run.

A shout followed her. She paid it no heed and bolted, heart in her throat, she was going to die, the dog had killed Spy and now it would kill her, and Scout—

—and Scout …

Scout. She risked looking over her shoulder, faltering. Scout had not moved, leaning heavy against a tree. The blue lights were exactly where they had been before. Pyro stalled, wondering if she was seeing things. “What’re—what is that,” she called out, voice wavering. “Why are you … why isn’t—”

“I don’t know, alright, just it said it ain’t gonna kill us, it won’t tell me nothin’ ’cept it wants both’a us before it’ll say—”

“Tell you—you talked to it? They don’t talk.”

“Yeah, well, this one does,” Scout said. He sounded exhausted, and worse for having raised his voice to answer her. “So quit freakin’ out.”

She could hear the bass rumble of the machine now, over the rushing river. It churned up a sickness in her gut, worsening as it grew louder and as Scout and the dog drew near. It had been huge in the factory basement and it was huger now, upright and active. It came to a halt when Scout did, in arm’s reach. “Thank you. Sorry for the alarm.” Its words came out strangely, like clipped-together recordings pasted into sentences, in a voice she could not pin any human traits to.

Pyro swallowed. She groped for words and found none. Scout filled the gap. “So, so both of us … you got both’a us now. What, uh. What happens now? Feel like, I-Iddaknow, enlightenin’ us any?”

“I want your help,” said the guard dog. “I am planning to sabotage Gray Mann.”

Pyro’s eyes fell on the robot’s foreleg, the one that had punched through Spy’s chest. She supposed she had expected to see bloodstains. She found none. “Why,” she said, and it was more of a growl than a question.

“I can only—”

“You killed our teammate,” Pyro snapped. “Gray probably built you himself, you’re _winning!_ What the hell were you thinking, Scout, what did you—”

She broke off as she looked at him. The flashlight still illuminated him, or most of him. He was studying the dog. The glare of the flashlight made the purple bruises under his eyes stark and vivid. “I mean,” he said, drifting off. It took him a few seconds to come back to his thought. “I didn’t want it t’get mad an’ change its mind about killin’ me, I guess.” He glanced at her and for the first time she could remember she found no anger or disgust in his face, all of it overwritten by fatigue. “We can at least hear what it’s wantin’ to say, right,” he went on. “Coulda killed us already, if it really meant to. An‘, I mean—I don’t know how to get back to the others, even if I did get outta the forest. I slept on the drive up. And, and my back is … just … wasn’t, wasn’t it you an’ Eng were the ones thought this guy was smarter than the rest, anyway?”

Pyro’s eyes were still fixed on the dog. Its motors rumbled, still loud but softer than she remembered. She spoke, but not to Scout. “Are you the same one that killed Spy?”

The lights on the guard dog’s face flickered. Processing. Searching its memory, maybe.

“No,” said the robot.

 

* * *

 

If nothing else, at least, Pyro had always had good luck with dogs. This was a truth about her. And the robot—well, they’d taken to calling it a dog, hadn’t they? She guessed it might as well count.

The guard dog had said, several times, that it hadn’t killed Spy. It had said it was a completely different unit. Whether or not she believed it, Pyro had never been good at detecting lies, and a machine had no cues or tells to give. She was left with a staring piece of metal and Scout, who looked like he was about to fall over, and she had relented to at least hearing it out. “But I want to set up camp first,” she said. “It’s too late and I’m tired.”

The robot had agreed to this. Scout did not seem to have an opinion one way or the other. He dropped as soon as they made camp, curling into a ball with the blanket Pyro let him have, and fell asleep within minutes next to the minuscule fire put she had made. She watched him from where she sat with her knees drawn up to her chest on the damp earth, dispassionate, mostly wishing she could make the fire bigger. Wishing, still, in the back of her mind, that she had gone to the inferno raging in the distance.

The robot stood motionless a short ways away. Pyro turned her stare on it after a while, trying to sort out the feelings that sunk into her as she did. She had not quite succeeded by the time she lifted her voice as much as she dared. “Hey, mechanical hound.”

It wasn’t like the thing had ears, or a face. At first she wasn’t sure if it had heard her. But the lights on its head flickered, and its speakers popped. “Mechanical hound?”

“I don’t know what else to call you. Do you … God.” Pyro exhaled, looking back at the campfire. “Do you have a name?”

“No.”

“I guess that makes two of us.”

A few seconds later, she heard the shifting and squeaking of springs and gears. When she looked over to the robot, it had lowered itself to lie flat on the ground with its forelegs extended, resembling nothing so much as a strange metal sphinx. She could not tell if it was watching her. Were the lights its eyes? Did it have hidden cameras? Could it see at all, even, or did it read its surroundings by some other means? The questions kept cropping up. She wanted to take it apart, see how it worked. Kill it and pick through its iron body.

“Esau,” the robot said.

Pyro started, her thoughts interrupted. “What?”

“You can call me Esau. Does that work?”

“… Sure,” Pyro said, and let her forehead drop against her knees. “You want us to help you fight Gray. Right? Why? What do you get out of it?”

“It would be too great a risk to tell you.”

“Oh, sure, right. I’m just supposed to trust a giant killer robot that shows up and says it wants to make nice. Fuck you. I’m not stupid.”

“You’re not,” Esau agreed. “You build your own weapons and avoided the authorities for nearly a year before BLU hired you. That takes intelligence.”

The robot’s motors ground away undisturbed for nearly a minute before Pyro managed to pick her thoughts back up from where they had shattered apart. “Okay,” she said once she had, “Cute. You know about me. Should I be impressed?”

“You’re as skeptical as my intel suggests,” Esau said. “I manage Gray’s database of you and your fellow mercenaries. It’s quite exhaustive. It also suggests that you suffer from memory loss.”

“So what.”

"So that is my offer. All of Gray’s information on you, in exchange for your help in bringing him down.”

Pyro’s eyes were still fixed to the fire. They stayed there as she processed what Esau had said, stirring only when another mechanical whine and a faint pop broke her concentration. “Here,” it said, and Pyro looked over to see a small compartment had expanded out from a section of its boxy chest. “Take this, as proof.”

It was sort of funny, the way she herself felt suddenly made of wire and springs as she got up and closed the short distance between herself and Esau. The compartment it offered was shallow and shook gently with the rumble of the rest of the machine, and inside lay a single flat rectangle of stiff gray paper. Pyro took it, and had to go back to the fire and squint down at it for a good thirty seconds to properly see what it was.

She swore aloud when she did, softly, one hand coming up to cover her mouth. Anything else she might have thought to say died in her throat. She could not pull her eyes away. Finally, Esau prompted her: “Is it a deal?”

“I,” Pyro started. She had to stop and swallow, suddenly dizzy, watching her fingers tighten around the paper. The night-sounds of the forest, the drone of Esau’s interior, the crackle of the fire, they were all lost beneath the sound of Pyro’s own pulse now hammering in her head. “Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, it’s—it’s a deal.”

 


	21. 18: WHAT WILL BECOME OF ME

* * *

 

 

  
  


 

 

 

 

 

Waking up was a mistake. One moment Scout had been mercifully unaware of anything in the world, and in the next he was freezing cold, and damp head-to-toe, and his back chewed at him like an animal. At first this was all he was aware of, and that was bad enough in and of itself.

It got worse when he realized someone was shaking his shoulder. His voice felt like a bog in his mouth, the words poured out in a thick slurry. “Go … go’way, ‘m, I’m asleep.“ The shaking stopped. Then it turned into a single hard thump against his arm and he curled into a tighter ball, whining. ”Go’ _way_.”

“I’m going to leave you behind if you don’t get up,” said a voice, and suddenly Scout’s blanket was gone. He cried out as if doused with cold water, at once shoving himself up with his hand. A bead of something wet rolled down his arms, and as if on cue the rest of the world started to swim. When it steadied itself, and when he’d stopped feeling like he was going to vomit, he saw only Pyro, squinting at the blanket she now held. “Why is this wet?” she said. And then, looking at him: “You’re sweating. Is this all sweat?”

“Give it back,” he managed, swiping at the hair plastered to his forehead. “Ain’t … g-god, give it back, it’s too cold.”

“We’re leaving,” Pyro said, rolling up the blanket and throwing it into her bag.

Slowly, painfully, Scout came around. Hunger clawed at him, and while the rest of him felt like it had been left in a freezer his burn felt red-hot again. It itched like a bastard to top it all off. By the time he finally got to his feet, Pyro had completely cleared up the camp and stood watching him impatiently. Something big and gray and blue stood near her, and it took him a few seconds of staring at it stupidly to remember. “Hell,” he said, looking the robot up and down through bleary eyes. “You weren’t no dream.”

“It wants us to call it Esau,” Pyro said. It took Scout a solid ten seconds to process this. When he did he turned his stare on her, one eyebrow high in the air. She shrugged. “Ask it yourself.”

“I … Esau? What?”

“It’s from the Bible, I think. Look. I’m going with it. Are you coming?”

He must have said yes, though later he would not remember doing so, because all at once they were off and walking. As bad as he felt, walking seemed to help clear his head. He always felt better moving. North, he thought. Were they going north? He wasn’t sure, and couldn’t seem to push far enough through his thoughts to sort out why. Better just to assume yes.

They walked for a long time. Everything seemed like it took a long time and he couldn’t get his bearings. There were no landmarks. Eventually it occurred to him that he should probably ask where they were going. “Further into the forest,” Pyro said, flat. “If you’re going to leave again you should probably do it before we get any deeper in.”

“There is a town a few hours out,” the robot said. Esau. Whatever. “You can stop there for the night.”

“A town?” Pyro said. “In the forest?”

"‘Settlement’ might be a better word.’

Scout heard them talking, sort of. The conversation kind of drifted past him. Shouldn’t he be hungrier? He hadn’t eaten yet. Probably, yeah. Wasn’t, though, and he wasn’t going to ask Pyro if he didn’t absolutely have to.

On they went. Scout lost track of time. His burn kept hurting. Maybe Pyro had painkillers? No—no, they’d lost them running from the monster. Back before they’d gotten split up. He wondered if Clarence was okay. Once or twice they stopped, in clearings, just for a moment or two. Or longer, Scout wasn’t sure of that either. He was starting to think this was a problem.

At some point Pyro had wordlessly handed him another of those tasteless rations, and it was sort of like trying to eat sand, but it mostly fixed his shakes. The air was still frigid against his still-damp skin, enough so that Scout looked at Pyro in disbelief for a minute or so when she had stripped off her gloves and tied her jacket around her waist. She had scars on her arms, too. None of them were as big and nasty as the ones on her face, but it made him all the more aware of the burn on his back. He wondered if it would leave a scar.

They walked forever. By the time the light had begun to fade and Esau made a turn in the trees Scout was running on nothing but autopilot and fumes. Suddenly they were on a foot-path, muddy and soft, the first easy terrain they’d had since this began. It was on this, a few minutes later, that Pyro stopped cold in the middle of it. “Hey—hey, Esau. Wait.”

The robot paused in the road, turning, and Scout nearly bumped into Pyro’s back. Shaking himself, he peered over her shoulder to see what had made her pause. At first he thought it was a pothole, a large one that he could have fit both feet into, but it had a shape to it.

Pyro pointed at the footprint. “Have you seen the thing that made this? The—” She hesitated. “The monster.”

“Monster?” Esau said. At least, Scout thought it sounded like a question. Whatever the robot used to speak, it wasn’t very good at intonation. “What do you mean?”

“We got … attacked by something. A big animal with a long neck. It looked—Scout, you saw, tell it.”

Scout blinked. Pyro was looking at him, now, over her shoulder. He thought about Clarence again. “It … y-yeah. Big animal, real big. Monster. It, I dunno, it had—had red eyes. Chased us.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” Esau said. “But the town is just ahead.”

The promise of civilization was a stronger force than their fear of the monster. At least they saw no more signs of the beast as the went.

The sun was all but gone when they finally turned another bend and were greeted by the sight of a handful of tiny buildings. It was first a relief and then a low, nagging feeling; something looked … off, about it, something Scout couldn’t quite put to words, or he couldn’t until Pyro did. “No lights?” she said to Esau. “I thought you said this was a town.”

“It is a town.”

“With no lights at night?”

“It’s empty. The people left when the machines came.”

Pyro cursed under her breath, and she might have been about to say something else, but whatever it might have been was interrupted as Scout pitched to one side and fell to the ground hard.

That was weird, he thought to himself, and weirder that he could not seem to find the strength to get back up. “Scout?” he heard Pyro say. “What the hell?”

“M’fine,” he got out. “M’just—s’fine.” He tried to push himself up right, failed. The motion sent a shock of pain radiating out from the burn all through him and there came a strangled gurgling sound from his throat. Then there were hands on him, hauling him roughly upright.

Talking, sort of distantly. He was dizzy and his legs felt the way they did after he’d gone for a long run, sort of numb and buzzy. Pyro was telling him to get himself together, thanks, helpful. He would’ve loved to. She got him on his feet, but let go of him as soon as she did, and he would have fallen again if not for the fact that Esau had swung around and positioned itself so that he fell back against it instead. The robot was talking, then Pyro, he couldn’t sort out the words. He was tired. He just needed to sit down for a while.

“… empty? Are there … over there? Can we …”

“… be quick. Keep him … far now …”

Somehow he was moving. He looked down and discovered it was Pyro’s doing, she had slung his arm over her shoulder and was pulling him along. Then things were dark, and then there was the jumpy, flickering glow of someone starting a lighter, and then he was being dragged again until he wasn’t. He’d been dumped face-first onto something soft. This, at last, was something he thought he could be okay with.

By the time Pyro finally found and lit a few candles, putting them on the table next to the bed, he was nearly unconscious. It was probably for the better, given that the next thing she did was to physically pull his shirt off. An involuntary shiver passed through him as the burn reminded him of its presence. He only just heard her swear, loudly, and he nearly missed Esau asking what was wrong. And, perhaps mercifully, he would not hear Pyro’s next words at all.

“I think—I think it’s sepsis. Blood poisoning. The burn’s infected. Oh, Christ. Oh no.”

 

* * *

 

Esau was nothing if not a good watchdog. Scout lay still on the bed, hastily covered by the comforter the house’s previous owners had left behind. He had scarcely moved since Pyro had examined the burn more closely the night before. “I think the blister burst,” she had said to Esau, peeling off saturated bandages from Scout’s back. “Fuck me. This is just perfect.”

“How did he get burned?”

“Me.”

A pause. “Is it bad?”

Pyro stopped, her back to Esau, and then gave a sharp, humorless sort of laugh. “Yes, it’s bad. It’s really bad.”

“What can be done?”

“Nothing. There’s nothing I can do. Especially not if he’s this bad already.”

Esau watched as she changed the dressing on the wound and threw the wet shirt into the fireplace that sat at one end of the room. They were in what might have been a master bedroom, spartan and tasteful in its decoration, and the hearth was clean. She set no fire, though. Instead she went and dropped into the chair of a desk sitting beneath a window that overlooked the town, and said no more. When she shifted about an hour later, leaning onto her knees, Esau’s speaker crackled. “We walked all day. You should sleep.”

She started, like she had forgotten it was there. There was a slow exhale in the darkness. “I’m fine.”

“You hardly slept at all last night. You are not going to be able to—”

“What are you, my mother? Fuck off. I can take care of myself.”

The machine was quiet for a few seconds. The blue lights on its face flickered for a heartbeat, flashing green. It tried again. “I can watch him. I’m able to monitor his vitals. If something changes I will wake you.”

It had got no answer. Eventually, though, Pyro too had succumbed to sleep.

Now, by Esau’s clock, it was a quarter after seven in the morning, and the sun was just beginning to rise. It made its slow way up through the trees, light creeping in through the large window over the desk Pyro was slouched over on. Birds began to sing. It was three-quarters of an hour after seven when Pyro stirred again, slowly pushing herself upright and blinking in the stream of sunlight covering her. She stayed motionless at first, looking out the window. The view beyond the cabin was picturesque, thick with morning fog that gently masked the few buildings and dirt roads that made up the settlement.

The calm of the morning shattered when Pyro’s chair scraped the floor as she pushed it backwards, getting up. She stopped short when she turned and saw Esau, taking it in for a long few seconds before shaking herself and making straight for the bed, where Scout was still unconscious. “He seems unchanged,” Esau said as Pyro held her wrist beneath his nostrils, checking for breath. “He did not do anything but sleep.”

“Lucky,” Pyro muttered.

“I won’t be able to watch him again tonight. I have something else that requires my immediate attention. I’ll be back by tomorrow morning at the latest.”

That got her to look at it again, her expression growing incredulous. “You’re leaving?”

“Only for a day.”

“You drag us all this fucking way into the fucking forest and now you’re screwing off somewhere? Where the hell are you going?”

It was 7:47 in the morning, and the room was quiet but for the hum of Esau’s motors. Pyro’s face morphed from disbelief to disgust. “You know what,” she said, darkly, “fine. Sure. And here I was thinking I could trust you.”

“Pyro—”

“Don’t. Don’t you call me that. It’s not even my goddamn name.”

She picked up her bag and stalked past it, out of the room, and if she heard Esau say “I’m sorry,” she made no sign of it.

 

* * *

 

Waking up was still a mistake. This time Scout came to all in a rush, his heart banging against his ribs. Dripping wet, again. The nightmare that had thrown him awake was already slipping out of reach.

There was a blanket over him. Pillows, behind. Blinking in the sunlight that had pooled over the bed he was apparently on, he stayed still, trying to understand where he was. He had never seen this room before: sparse but homey, with framed photos and knick-knacks on the desk. There was a fireplace, and in the fireplace was something blue. Dimly he realized he was not wearing a shirt, and shivered.

He shivered and gulped down the air—started coughing, hard. Breathing felt difficult, like there was still smoke in the air, but the fireplace was unlit. It took a concentrated effort to try and push himself up from where he was lying on his stomach, and he only managed it for a few seconds before his arms gave out on him. When he looked at his fingers they were shaking. It felt like the entire world had changed overnight and no one had bothered to fill him in on it.

It was far too much. He had nearly decided to go back to sleep when he heard a creak, and saw motion from the side of his eye. He tried to look, and was spared the trouble when Pyro circled the bed and came to a stop in front of him. All he could easily make out of her was her legs. “I guess you’re still alive,” she said.

This time he managed to force himself upright. His head spun, and he thought he might be ill, but he managed to cross his legs and lean heavy on his knees. This seemed to be all he could manage, for he sat there huffing like he had run a marathon. “What d’you want?” he said, after a longer pause than seemed necessary.

“You’re sick,” she said, and again her voice lacked any semblance of emotion. “The blister popped and your burn got infected. And since I’m not a doctor, you’re going to die. Good morning, by the way.”

Scout gaped at her, jaw slack as he tried to understand. Eventually he settled on what seemed like the most important part of what she’d said. “Die?”

“Eat this.” Unceremoniously she dropped an unopened MRE into his lap. “There’s water and painkillers next to the candles. You’re welcome.”

Scout was still trying to catch up with her, or was until she said _water_. Looking at the bedside table, he found a cloudy glass of it. He grabbed it and chugged it, trying to get the foul taste out of his mouth, and had nearly drained it when Pyro turned to leave. He choked on the water, sputtered, and croaked out, “W-wait, wait.” She half-turned, her hand on the door handle. “What … what’re you talkin’ about? I ain’t, I ain’t dyin’, just I’m sick—”

“Yeah, you’re sick with sepsis. You don’t get better from sepsis. Not without a hospital.”

“I ain’t gonna _die_ over a stupid, what, a fever? It’s, it’s a cold, it’s just—”

“Oh my God,” Pyro hissed, dragging a hand down the smooth side of her face. “No. I guess I have to spell this out. Your burn is infected. You have blood poisoning. You _have to_ go to the hospital for blood poisoning and I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re in the middle of a fucking _forest._ So that means no hospitals, and no doctors, and if you _follow_ , you are going to _die._ ”

This time when Scout felt a chill come over him, he could tell it was not from the fever.


	22. 19: AMONG MAD PEOPLE

* * *

 

 

  
  


 

 

 

 

Pyro managed not to slam the door behind her as she stalked out of the cabin, but only just.

God damn it. It was a beautiful fucking day. Standing on the porch she could feel a light breeze easing its way over her skin and through her hair, and smoke perfumed the air tantalizingly. She stood there for a while, watching the sun beat down on the lip of the porch, debating her next move, wishing for a cigarette.

Then she was some fifty feet away, standing on the dirt road that passed the house on its way to the rest of the town. This dawned on her sort of slowly, which was an improvement on the sudden startles that came with most of her time-skips, but it was still unpleasant on the whole. She shook herself, rubbed at her temples, and started down the path.

It was not much of a path. It cut lazily through the forest settlement, vanishing beneath the grass here and there, clearing the ten or so buildings before ebbing off into the forest. The buildings were mostly houses, all quaint, small wooden things, and the ones that weren’t were a general store and a church and a saloon. She had ransacked all of them earlier that morning, looking for supplies. This had supplied the painkillers, which she had only recognized because they were the same brand she had at home, and she had replaced her filthy, muddy shirt and pants with ones stolen from an unexpectedly spacious closet in one of the houses. There was a decent enough windfall of unspoiled food, too; mostly tinned meat and jerky, and dry granola. She had taken all of it back with her upon her return to the cottage to check on Scout, and it was currently lying in a heap on a kitchen table.

So that had been the morning, and Scout was still going to die, and she was losing time. Fine. It wasn’t like she could do anything about any of it. Instead she just kept on down the road, kicking savagely at rocks and bits of wood that she came upon, until she had passed out of the abandoned village completely and was making her way through high, skinny evergreens.

The sun poured down through the branches, and she could hear the occasional chattering or rustling noise from some animal, though she saw none. The trees here were too thick and tall for her to make out the smoke plume still blotting out the sky. She crushed fallen pinecones underfoot and wished her life had not come together in a way that was now going to force her to wait for Scout’s slow and painful death.

Maybe killing him herself would be kinder.

She was turning this thought over in her mind, looking at each unpleasant facet of it, when her foot hit something she had failed to notice coming up ahead of her. She had walked directly into a well.

It was one of those sorts of wells Pyro could recall mostly seeing on the covers of books or in artistic magazine photographs; brown brick, with a wooden bucket-pulley system on top of it. It must have had a roof, once, but that was missing now. Despite herself she leaned forward and looked down: her own blurry reflection looked back up at her. She did not really have mirrors in her house. Her own reflection was always a little startling. “Hello, Alice,” she muttered, and tried the crank.

In short order she had hauled up a bucketful of water. A yellow leaf was floating in it, and a dead box-elder beetle, but it seemed potable enough otherwise. Her reflection still matched her gaze. She cupped the water in her hands, shattering it into ripples, and drank.

Chin and fingers dripping, she poured the bucket back down into the well, beetle and all. Wiping her hands on her pants, the edge of her finger caught on something stiff in her pocket. She almost let it be, but couldn’t, in the end.

The photograph was printed in smudged ink on cheap gray card stock, and looked sad and lifeless in the sunlight. Still Pyro stared down at it without any inkling as to how long, idly rubbing the edge with her thumb until it was creased and red with the motion. It had started to hurt by the time she flipped it over to redirect her focus to the thin black lines on the back. She exhaled, shook herself again, and snapped open one of the pockets on her jacket. Out came the pen, miraculously still with her, and she knelt to pin the card against the well with her other hand.

It was a stupid effort, she chastised herself as she copied the markings stroke-for-stroke onto the back of her left hand, but that didn’t stop her. If made to guess she supposed she would have said she was looking for another lightning-bolt of clarity, another miracle; something, anything, that would let her read the word now drying on her skin.

 

* * *

 

The sun had been up and the light had been young when Pyro had left Scout to his own devices, and now the sun was setting, and yet somehow he still couldn’t seem to pinpoint exactly how _much_ time had passed. He kept trying to add the hours up and they dissolved in his hands like so much smoke. It didn’t help that he had fallen into a fitful and feverish sleep somewhere in the middle of it, either.

He could not particularly remember eating the ration Pyro had given him. He must have done so, because it was lying in a messy heap on the edge of the bed, partially gone. He did remember feeling ill, and he remembered noticing that was around the time he had started to feel his pulse in his temples, _thmp, thmp, thmp._ His breathing seemed to be speeding up. He was sticky with sweat and still cold and his shin hurt, because there was a nice purple-yellow bruise flowering on it now, because he had dragged himself out of bed to find the bathroom and instead got one foot caught in the sheets. He’d banged his leg against the bed frame and had been unable to get up for a solid fifteen minutes. By the time he’d managed to stand up and take care of himself, and take a long drink from the faucet, he was limping and he could barely walk for shaking. As he fell back into bed and dragged the blankets around him again, the only feeling he had been very sure of having was a clear and distinct sense of danger, and of being too tired to do anything about it.

But now he was awake again, nauseous and too cold and empty everywhere, and the sun was setting. For the last however long he had been watching the encroaching dark slowly pull the last bits of light out of the room. The candles next to the bed were unlit. Even if he had remembered his brother’s lighter in his pocket he would not have been able to steady his hand enough to light them. And the final dregs of light faded away and left him alone, in the cold black.

His own voice startled him, and he wasn’t really sure what he had said. It felt like it had been lost in the darkness, and so were the other sounds he was making, mewling, piteous things. It dawned on him that he was calling out to someone. He wondered who.

Perhaps it was whoever had just opened the door.

It was darkness against darkness, a fuzzy outline. Its hand rested on the door handle. “Ma?” Scout said, rasping, like wire bristles over metal. The darkness wavered. The door began to close. Scout felt something lurch in his gut and thought he would be sick. “Wh—d, don’t go, don’t. Ma? Please, it’s me, it’s, I’m …”

His mother had gone very still. He wet his cracking lips and swallowed and it hurt. “Look, please, I don’t … she, Pyro, she said I was dyin’ and I think really she meant it. I really think she did. I’m, ’m sorry about everything, I’m sorry about me, just—just, please …”

Slowly, she stepped into the room. Footsteps at his side, and then a tiny, intense light, blinding him. When he could see again, when the light had been drawn back into the room, the only other person there was Pyro. She straightened up, closing her lighter with a harsh snap.

They looked at one another, and Scout was not used to looking up at Pyro, nor to her looking down at him. “I’m not your mother,” Pyro said, sort of gingerly. “Your mother isn’t here.”

Scout blinked at her stupidly, trying to understand. Any understanding he found seemed to disappear when Pyro turned to go back to the door. “Wait. Wait, d-don’t.”

“What?”

He tried to swallow again. It still hurt. “You—you were serious. You really meant it, what you said? Before? This is it?”

“Yeah.” She had stopped with her hand on the knob, and had not looked at him again. “I’ve … yeah.”

“When?”

She glanced back at him, a flash of blue in the dim light. “Probably tonight.”

He stared back at her until another wave of icy shivers shook through him. All his muscles seemed to contort, contract, pulling him into a ball, he pressed his knuckles so hard against his eyes that his head spun. “Fuck. _Fuck!_ Fucking _hell,_ it’s not _fair_!”

He dissolved into ranting, growing more incoherent by the second. The outburst survived less than a minute, his dwindling energy leaving him just a wet, hollow thing on the mattress. What little he had left began to spiral, moving in ever-tightening circles, dragging him through old memories. His family, how their faces suddenly seemed just out of reach. How it had only taken him a month to forget what Tobias’s face looked like, how his brother had seemed to disappear from their lives like a vanishing ghost. Would he suffer the same fate, fading out of memory?

Would anyone but Pyro ever even know he was dead?

Slowly, as if waking from some dream, he began to hear the chirping of insects outside the house. He began to smell the smoke in the air from the candles, and to see the way Pyro had shut the door to lean on it, staring at the tiny fires, her hand still wrapped around the knob. He had remembered her face, he thought. A year and a thousand miles and a horrific burn scar, and he had still remembered her face, as if he had put more of himself into remembering hers than his brother’s.

He wanted to be angry. He wanted to be furious and violent and reckless, to upend the nightstand, to smash the window. All he was instead was afraid. He scarcely recognized his own voice when he spoke again, for it was hoarse and thin and desperate.

“Don’t—don’t leave, willya? I know I’m not … you’re … it’s just I hate t’be by myself, you know? I don’t want … when … and _alone._ Oh, God. Please don’t leave me here alone.”

 

* * *

 

In no respect would Pyro have ever described herself as merciful, or charitable, or particularly compassionate. In most cases, she would be hard-pressed to so much as call herself a good person.

None of this explained why she had not yet left.

Scout’s voice had grown so faint that she barely made out the whole of what he had said. She did make it out, though, and of course that was the damning factor. The door against her back felt much more solid than it had a few seconds ago, as if despite already being shut it had closed itself even further.

She was a creature of the present, at the heart of her. She could not imagine what tomorrow morning would be like. She could only really grasp what was in front of her right now.

Her hand slipped off the doorknob.

She did not look at Scout as she pushed herself off the door and circled the bed, going to sit at the desk for the second time in as many evenings. Her eyes stayed fixed on her hands, on the white scars, on the black letters. Even when she did find her voice again (quiet, uncertain, chalky) she could not quite bring herself to meet his gaze. “Do you need anything? Are you hungry?”

When no answer came she finally forced herself to look at him, and realized abruptly that she was completely out of his line of sight: stuck on his right side, unable to change positions due to the burn, his back was to her.

By the time Scout said, “Not really,” Pyro finally convinced herself into picking up the chair and going back around to sit at his side. Now she _had_ to look at him. His face was splotchy red with the fever, and his eyes puffy and bloodshot. His hair had grown out longer than he usually kept it and what reached his face was plastered to his skin with sweat, and he was breathing too quickly, too shallowly.

“Do you know where you are?” Pyro asked.

“F—forest. U-um. Don’t remember the name. In … in a town?”

“Yeah, a little town. Esau said it’s called Kewaunee.”

“Is there a phone?”

“A phone?”

Scout grimaced, shifting under the blanket. “I—my brother. H-he’s real hurt, he’s in the hospital. I didn’t … I was s’posed to be able to go back home to see him. Roger. Idiot, got in a wreck, God. It isn’t _fair._ ”

Pyro bit her lip, thinking, trying to remember. She hadn’t been looking for phones. “I don’t … I don’t think so. No. There’s not any telephone poles around, anyway.”

“It isn’t fair,” he mumbled again, and fell silent.

Half an hour ticked by. Pyro sat alternatingly looking at the candle and at Scout, who had shut his eyes but betrayed his wakefulness with occasional coughing and pawing at his eyes. It wasn’t until he shook himself and rolled onto his stomach, staring fixedly at the headboard, that Pyro asked, “Can I do anything?”

He kept staring at the headboard as he said, in a tone that was less accusatory and more resigned, “You killed my brother and now you’ve gone and killed me too. You ruined my life. Ain’t you done enough already?”

“I … yeah,” she said, after a moment. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t forgive you.”

“I don’t think you should. But I’m sorry anyway.”

Scout’s back rose and fell in a harsh, long sigh. “He told me you said you was an orphan,” he said, wrapping his arms around the pillow, look at her at last. “Is that why you’re crazy? No parents?”

This had put her on the back foot. Pyro tried and failed to remember the last time someone had asked her about her parents. “Sort of,” she said. “Probably part of it. They drowned, that’s why I hate water. I don’t know, I was five. There’s always been something wrong with me. I almost burned down the orphanage a couple of times. I burned down the hardware store I worked in as a teenager. I burned my foster family’s house down too.”

“Jesus Christ,” Scout muttered, still eyeing her. “What, did they beat you?”

“No. No one got hurt. I needed a distraction because I was a stupid fourteen-year-old and I was running away from home, because I didn’t like living there, so … you know.” She shook her head, almost laughing. “Burn the place down. What could go wrong?”


	23. 20: BEGIN AT THE BEGINNING

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**JUNE 28TH, 195X  
** **SOMEWHERE OFF INTERSTATE 476, PENNSYLVANIA**

The one good thing the nuns ever had to say about the runaway had always been that she was smart. She learned things easily, she was clever. This was why the idiot stunts she pulled never failed to astonish them. Things like pulling up entire new saplings from the yard to try and whittle things from them, or stealing mail to collect the stamps, or making a bomb out of a tennis ball, lighter fluid, and several hundred match heads. _Why?_

The runaway never had an answer when asked, no matter how angry the nuns or her foster parents or teachers got. She didn’t know, not really. She just did things, sometimes.

This latest fiasco might have been her best one yet, though. She had put some thought into it this time, or at least into how not to get caught. Not that it was hard. Her foster family, the one she’d been foisted off to on her thirteenth birthday, none of them were very smart. Not smart enough to tell the difference between a deliberately started fire and an accident, anyway.

So it had been midnight on her fourteenth birthday when she had knocked down the candles burning in the study, where the family dog liked to cause trouble at night. (She had let the dog outside beforehand, just to be sure it was safe, because it was the only thing in the house she had ever liked.) She had stayed and watched the flames consume the papers and the desk and the drapes, pouring smoke out the open window, before getting ahold of herself and shrieking bloody murder.

By the time the rest of the house had roused and run out into the street, she was already leaving on the Greyhound that would take her to parts unknown. And she would suppose in hindsight that she didn’t have a terribly _good_ reason to burn her foster family’s house down and vanish into the night. She had just decided she wanted to.

Now she was fourteen years and one week old, and if the last bus driver was to be believed, she was somewhere in Pennsylvania. Most of the money she had scraped and saved and stolen in the year leading up to her escape had gone toward the bus ticket, and the rest of it was dwindling fast. The runaway had not thought quite this far ahead. She was not entirely sure what she was going to do when it was gone. That, though, was a problem for another day.

Today’s problems mostly involved finding a new place to sleep. She’d spent last night under a footbridge that spanned a small, dry canal bed, and woke up cramped and sore and covered in mosquito bites. Alone, though. She could sleep there again tonight, probably, but the idea wasn’t very appealing. Instead she set off deeper into the anonymous city she’d landed in, picking her way through blocks and sidewalks, unsure of what she was looking for.

Even if she had known, she would have forgotten it immediately when the scream of a siren split the air. Between a shoe store and a carpenter’s, she froze on the sidewalk and looked behind her to see some huge red thing tearing up the street, wailing. The fire engine roared past and she stared after it for a split second before something else sped by her on the sidewalk, nearly clipping her as it went. She flinched, but by then it was gone: a kid on a bike, racing after the fire truck. There were two more in the street following after. In another moment both the truck and the children had vanished around a corner up ahead, but she wasn’t looking at them anymore; she was looking at the billowing clouds of black smoke hung high in the air, toward where the truck had gone.

She had no bike, but she had always been a good runner. In two minutes she caught up with where the truck had pulled to a halt, next to a second, identical one. The kids were there, too, their bikes forgotten on the grass behind them where they stood on the asphalt with their heads craned back like baby birds. The runaway scarcely noticed. Her eyes were fixed on the inferno boiling up fire and smoke in front of the trucks. It had probably been a shop or something not long ago, judging by the weathered sign on its front, but this was a definite improvement. It was a massive, brilliant fire, bigger than anything else she’d ever seen. A Fire with a capital F. When she tried to swallow her mouth was dry.

She wouldn’t have noticed the firemen at all if they hadn’t come barreling toward her, dragging a massive length of hose from the truck. One of them barked at her and on instinct she shied away, giving them access to the hydrant she hadn’t realized she was standing in front of. “Fuckin’ kids,” she heard one of them mutter to the other.

The hydrant wrenched open with an ear-piercing squeak and a sudden gushing of water. The hose went from flat to bulging in an instant, and as the runaway watched one of the firemen ran back to the truck, and the fire. A moment later a massive blast of water exploded through one of the first-story windows with a terrific splintering sound. The runaway shivered.

Ahead of her, the other kids had run closer to the excitement. The runaway followed as close as she dared, stopping a few yards from the truck to watch the flames crackle and roar. Smoke gushed upward, lingering in the air like a storm. The runaway watched. She was transfixed, she felt cold all over even with the flames, even with the bright July day. This was nothing like the fires she had ever started, or seen. She could hear shouting, and the prodigious snapping of timber and collapsing ceilings, and rapid footsteps as people were carried out from the harm’s way.

And, to her, it seemed to all vanish as soon as it had come, though when the smoke cleared from the sky it would betray the sun’s motion. The runaway shook herself, swallowing down a huge gulp of air, and felt her heart thudding hard in her chest. There was no more fire, or not enough to be worth watching. Just dying embers.

There were more people here, now. A police car, and an ambulance, and all the people the vehicles had brought with them. The firemen were rolling up their hose, and the other children had crowded over to try and see in the back of the ambulance.

An engine roared. One of the fire trucks, leaving.

None of the children noticed when the runaway went and picked up one of the bikes on the grass, all chipped green paint and rust, and rode it off after the fire truck down the street, out of sight.

 

* * *

 

By the time the runaway stopped and let the bike drop to the ground she was sweating, and hard. It had been a surprisingly long ride with surprisingly little shade, and her long hair stuck to the back of her neck, itchy and prickly. She was trying to get it under control, now, braiding it together as she stood in the shadow of a young tree and tried to figure out what to do next.

The building she had stopped in front of was a tall, squarish thing, made of white and red brick that had seen better days. It sat on a mostly empty lot, with only a handful of other buildings in sight. Ivy and bittersweet covered one side of it, climbing around windows and doors. Some of the windows were broken, and covered up with cardboard. It had three garage doors, each one with an arched word overtop the entrance, but they were so old and worn she could not read what they said. The only words left legible were the cut-stone letters at the very top of the structure: FIRE DEPARTMENT.

She hadn’t really had a plan, coming after the fire truck. There was no one outside, and she had arrived too late to see the truck pull into the garages. This place couldn’t do anything for her. It certainly wasn’t going to feed her, or give her a place to stay.

Just looking at the place was suddenly annoying to her. A firehouse. All they did was put fires _out_. Once she got her breath back, the runaway picked her new bike up and set off down the road again.

That night she slept in a graveyard. The night after that, too. The third night it rained for eight straight hours. The runaway spent the entire time pressed against a tree, cringing every time a raindrop made it down to her and staving off panic until dawn arrived and dispelled the clouds. Everything was humid and wet, and the sky still gray and sour. And to top it off, the groundskeeper found her and kicked her out. Now, hungry and exhausted, she found herself walking her bike along the sidewalks to nowhere in particular.

This “running away” business wasn’t quite as much fun as the novels she’d read made it sound.

Maybe it was luck that she looked up to find herself at the firehouse again. Luck, or something else; truth be told, she had found herself wandering back to it the day before, too. It was the only thing she’d seen in town that had anything to do with Fire. Yesterday it had been just as closed-off as before. Today, though, one of the garages was open.

The runaway paused on the cracked cement sidewalk, peering inside. Within she could see a cavern of a garage, dimly-lit dozens of things she could not have named strewn haphazardly within. The fire truck was there, too, and somehow in the half-light looked much less impressive than she remembered. Seeing no one around, she drew closer, leaving the bike on the sidewalk behind her. She did not notice the fat coil of firehose on the ground until she stepped on it.

It was a lucky thing that she did not get tangled in it, though she nearly tripped trying to get clear. It was taut with water pressure, and she barely had time to wonder why when someone yelled: “Hey! Kid! Get outta here!”

She looked up and found two people crouched some yards down the sidewalk, by a hydrant. The hose was connected to this, of course, and one of the two, a heavy-set man with a mustache, was holding the nozzle. The other had their back to her, and was peering over their shoulder at her. The only detail she could make out about them was that they had a crooked nose.

It was the one with the mustache that had spoke. He made an impatient gesture. “Well?”

The runaway narrowed her eyes. “Why? I’m not doing anything wrong.”

“Good for you, now get lost.”

“Why should I?”

“Jesus,” the man muttered, looking away. The runaway allowed herself a small smirk. It was wiped away in an instant when something struck her hard in the chest.

She was aware first of being knocked to the ground, and then of pain, and then of being cold. She was staring up at the sky and the top of the firehouse, at the cut-stone letters reading FIRE DEPARTMENT, heaving gasps that abruptly began to be uncontrolled hyperventilating. She was soaking wet, there was water in her mouth and nose and ears. She scarcely heard the sharp bark of a woman’s voice or the indignant yelp of the man, nor of the stream of water being pulled off her. A moment later she was being dragged upright. “Christ,” someone was saying in a sharp, irritated voice. “Fucking hell, Joshua, she’s a kid. Hey. Hey, Pochahontas, snap out of it.”

Fingers snapping in her face. The runaway cringed, trying and failing to pull herself free. She couldn’t seem to get enough air, her chest was a constant bellows, in-out-in-out. The person holding her muttered something else, and then she was being yanked into the firehouse.

She was hustled along at breakneck speed, and between that and her physical distress she could not do more than catch glimpses of the place: more firemen squinting at her and her captor as they went, rooms of strange equipment, rooms full of bunk beds. It was a blur, and she would hardly remember any of it when she was brought to a halt and roughly deposited on something soft. Her head was still spinning, she was still struggling to breathe, and she hurt all over.

“… jackass idiot, kick his teeth it,” someone was saying. Someone had her by the jaw. The runaway tried to jerk away and the grip tightened. An unfamiliar face, inches from hers. It was a weathered, leathery, jowled face, with a crooked nose, and the woman who owned it had dishwater blond hair and a disgusted expression. “Kid. What? Are you bleeding? What the hell is wrong with you?”

The runaway did nothing, at a loss. The logical part of her was coming back again, forcing her to remember that simply being wet couldn’t hurt her. Remembering was one thing. It didn’t do much to stave off her shaking or the way the room was spinning. Seeking a distraction, she tried to get her bearings. The room she had been taken to was cramped and messy, stuffed with old furniture. There was a huge, dusty jukebox in one corner, next to a small bookshelf with more tools than books inside it. No light came in through the windows directly, leaving the place sort of dim and forbidding, but she could see light coming through a huge, smooth hole on the far end, in the middle of which a steel pole ran up from below and into a matching hole in the ceiling.

Any calm she had begun to acquire was scattered when something was tossed into her lap. At some point her jaw had been freed. She flinched again, realized it was a towel, and felt stupid. Looking up, she found the blond woman unrolling a length of gauze. “I don’t know how to treat a concussion and we don’t have any docs in house,” she said, not bothering to look at the runaway while she said it. “So don’t go getting any worse. Hear me?”

The runaway said nothing, aggressively trying to dry herself off. Before she quite realized it the woman had crossed over to her again, gauze in one hand and a bottle of rubbing alcohol in the other. “Let me see it,” the woman said in a ton that would brook no argument. The runaway obeyed, and tensed and grit her teeth when the wet, burning sensation of the disinfectant lit up the back of her scalp, where she hadn’t realized she’d been bleeding from. In another moment the gauze was being tied around her head. The woman did all this in silence, until she was tying off the gauze. “Where’re your parents?”

“Not here.”

“Don’t be cute with me, I don’t like it. Straight answers.”

Straight answers? Fine. “They’re dead,” the runaway said, now meeting the woman’s gaze again. “They died nine years ago.”

This was a fact about her life that the runaway had always wielded like a weapon, once the reality finally settled in. It was usually good for sympathy, or getting out of trouble. _Oh, poor thing, of course she’s acting out._ The fact of the matter was that she barely remembered her parents, now. It was her brother that she found herself missing most, late at night, on those infrequent days when she remembered that her life was not the way it was supposed to be.

At this, though, the woman only cocked one eyebrow. “Yeah? How’d they die?”

The runaway faltered. No one had ever responded like that before. “They … drowned. In a river. My brother, too.”

“Shitty.”

“Y-yeah.”

“You lying?”

“No!”

“Shitty,” the woman said again, clucking her tongue. “Fine. You can stay here until you can walk straight again, and then you go wherever it is orphan Indians call home. I don’t want to see your ass around here again. It’s dangerous.”

She turned to go, leaving the runaway sitting stiff and still and with her hands knotted up in the now-damp towel. She had reached the doorway when the runaway called out: “What if I don’t have a home?”

The woman stopped. She stood motionless in the doorway, half-turned, looking down at the stairwell the runaway could just see past her. There was no expression on her sun-worn face. When she sighed and shifted her weight to lean on the door frame, she did not look at the runaway. “What’re you, fifteen?”

“Fourteen.”

“You’re fourteen and you’ve got no parents and you’re on the street. Is that what you’re telling me?” Before she could answer, the woman snorted and stepped back into the room, pulling the door shut behind her. “Don’t you have a reservation or a tipi or something to go back to?”

The runaway said nothing, just glared. This time the woman laughed, leaning back against the door with her arms folded across her chest. “You’re going to get murdered. You’ll be lucky if that’s _all_ you get.”

“I can take care of myself,” said the runaway.

“I just watched you have a mental breakdown from getting wet, you mouthy little bitch. What’s your name?”

The runaway hesitated. That had been a thing the nuns hammered into her, at the orphanage; don’t talk to strangers, which she’d already trampled all over, and don’t give your _name_ to strangers. And besides that, names had always felt like a powerful sort of thing, to her. If someone had your name it was like they had some sort of power over you. But she did tell her, in the end. The woman raised one eyebrow, studying her perhaps a bit more closely than before.

“Alright,” she said eventually. “Fine. You can sleep there tonight, if you want. I don’t want to deal with any cops if I kick you out and you turn up dead in a ditch tomorrow. You eaten? No. Fine. I’ll dig something out. Do you drink water or does that scare you too?”

A bit shell-shocked, the runaway fumbled for an answer. “N … no,” she said. “Um. Thanks. Thank you.”

“Yeah, well, don’t get comfortable. I don’t like kids and you’re not an exception. You owe me. I’ll figure out how you can pay me back later.” The woman narrowed her eyes, glancing back at the door she leaned against. “And don’t talk to any of the shitheads around here. If they give you any crap, you tell them June will kick their sorry dicks in, and that’s a promise.”

 

* * *

 

Pyro cut herself off, swallowing, suddenly aware of what she was doing. She had not intended to tell Scout that story. It had just … sort of come out. And he’d listened, not interrupting, watching her now and then with puffy red eyes. She had never told anyone that story. She had never told anyone about June.

And now Scout was still and silent on the mattress, eyes closed.

“Scout?” she said quietly, and got no answer. She leaned forward, one hand on the mattress’s edge, and after a moment’s hesitation held her hand out just beneath his nose. Hot, fevered breath hit her skin, lightly. Still breathing. Still alive. For now.

She pulled her hand away, tucking it under one arm as she folded them across her chest. “Scout?” she said again, still soft, and it struck her that she did not even know what his real name was. Two people from the same family dead by her hand and she could not have even said with certainty what their names were. “What am I supposed to do with your body, Scout?”

No answer.

Pyro bit her lip. She got to her feet, and snuffed out all but one of the candles. And when she went to leave, she again lingered in the doorway. Looking over her shoulder, Scout was nothing more than a dark shape against darker shapes, silent and motionless. She stayed there for nearly five minutes, feeling like there was something she was meant to do, or say. In the end, all she did was quietly shut the door.


	24. 21: IMPOSSIBLE THINGS

* * *

 

 

 

 

  

 **** Improbably, morning came.

Pyro did not dream, for whatever small favor that was worth. Probably the sheer exhaustion of walking for so many days. When she woke on the couch she had dropped off on, in the middle of the cabin’s den, it took her an uncomfortably long time to remember where she was; it took even longer to remember why.

And then the steady, rising sense of guilt, when she turned her head to look at the closed door she had left Scout behind. Another strike for the list of people she was responsible for the death of, along with Tobias, and Dell.

She wondered when she had begun blaming herself for Dell, and for the fire that had toppled the farmhouse.

Very deliberately, she got to her feet, and did not open Scout’s door. Instead she ate, and explored the house. She had avoided this particular building all day yesterday, not wanting to deal with an encounter with Scout. There was nothing of great interest to be found, mostly; the house was relatively large for what it was, and nicely furnished, but made up mainly of the things you’d expect in a house. Or at least, it was until she tugged open what she had assumed to be a broom closet, with its narrow white door.

Sunlight bloomed over her. She stood blinking in the light, waiting for her eyes to adjust, and when they did she found before her a small, densely-packed room entirely unlike the rest of the house. It was wallpapered with maps, some old and yellowing, some new and printed in crisp colored ink, decorative and elaborate. Standing globes littered the corners. A leaning wooden shelf stood vigil on one wall, home to some two-dozen books in different states of decay. Apart from this there was only one other piece of furniture in the room; a broad, low table, with something spread out on its surface and pinned neatly down.

Another map, Pyro realized as she drew near, though of what she could not discern. To her it looked like a haphazard array of topography, cut over with straight dark lines that must have delineated roads and buildings. Some of these were tagged with numbers, or tightly-written words she didn’t think she would have been able to decipher even if she had been able to read them. The only other thing on the table was a hard hat, battered, yellow, an unfamiliar logo plastered to its side. A light was strapped to the front.

She stayed there for a long time, looking at it, trying to glean some meaning out of its carefully-drawn depths, but nothing ever came.

 

* * *

  

She had gone to investigate the kitchen when it happened. There was a considerable wealth of food here, jerky and peanuts and raisins. There was even a bag of baking chocolate chips, and she downed a handful of them before realizing they were not nearly as sweet as she expected. She sputtered, swallowed, and dropped the bag back on the counter, glaring at it as she licked chocolate smudges off her fingertips. She would stick to the peanuts.

At least, it occurred to her, that she would only have to worry about keeping herself fed now.

It was this that at last made her stop and look toward Scout’s door again. She had not exactly felt any particular rush in beginning that duty, and the longer she waited, the less likely it became that she might accidentally walk in on his final moments.

But the town was ransacked, and offered precious little else of value. She thought, briefly, about going and looking for a phone. Perhaps she could get in touch with TFI, or at least with someone who might be able to get her out of the forest.

The idea was pushed abruptly out of her mind when a shadow passed over the light ebbing out from under the door to Scout’s room.

Pyro froze, her eyes fixed to the gap. It was all light again now. She waited, staring, unblinking. The shadow did not come again. Maybe she had imagined it. Maybe the stress and the guilt was getting to her, maybe she was losing it again. She wondered if Alice could survive out here, on her own.

Steeling herself, she crossed to the door. She took the knob and turned it, and jumped a little when it nearly came out in her hand, rattling loosely. Had it been that way last night. It didn’t seem like it. Regardless, though, the door opened.

The morning sun streamed into the room. There was a foreign smell in the air, something intensely familiar that she couldn’t quite place. And Scout lay motionless in bed. Or … no. Not quite motionless. He was breathing. He still looked like a mess, to be certain, but he was alive.

Then something in the corner of her eye moved and someone said, “Morning,” and she nearly had a heart attack. She jerked backwards and bit her tongue, hard, and while she was cringing in pain the gigantic four-legged robot she had apparently utterly failed to notice upon entering stepped backward. “Sorry,” it said.

Pyro hissed some jumble of curses under her breath, too disoriented to even get them out properly. “Where—when did you get back?” she began, and then stopped, looking it up and down with trepidation. “You’re … are you Esau?”

It was as good a question as any. The robot in front of her now was still blue and gray and headless and still went on four legs, but its frame seemed to be thinner, more lithe. It had more tubing and few angles, and looked less like a machine and more like an animal. There was something else about it bothering her, too, but like the smell in the air she couldn’t place it. “Still Esau,” it said. "You were asleep when I got back.”

“Are you why the door handle was broken?”

“Probably. I had some trouble with it. No thumbs,” it added, and with a mechanical whir it extended a small metal arm she had not seen before from near its shoulder, ending in a simple clamp. Maybe that was new, too. “I wanted to see how Scout was holding up, and I did not want to wake you.”

“Oh,” Pyro said absently. She looked at Scout again, still unconscious. In the light she could see the bags under his eyes, and the thin patches of stubble trying to form on his jaw. “Last night he was dying.”

“He seems to have recovered.”

“You look different.”

“I lost weight. Thanks for noticing.”

Oh, now it had a personality. Great. Pyro gave it no response, waiting for it to elaborate. Ten seconds passed. It did no such thing. It was in those ten seconds that she realized what it was that was bothering her about Esau now: the constant, rumbling motor-drone that had been the herald of every robot they had yet encountered was now completely gone. She filed this information away, unsure of what to do with it. “Did you … you didn’t get him medicine or something, did you? This isn’t right. You don’t just get over sepsis.”

“Are you sure?”

“Very.”

“Well,” Esau said, as Pyro looked back down at Scout. She felt her face twist into something uncomfortable as she reached out and gingerly touched the back of her hand to Scout’s forehead. Warm. Not feverish. He shifted under her touch, slightly, grimacing. “I don’t know what I could have done, then. Maybe it’s a miracle.”

“Do robots believe in miracles?”

“That’s a good question. I don’t know.”

 

* * *

 

Everything felt soft. Dust motes weaved slow patterns through the beam of late-afternoon sunlight that had stopped to peer into the room. The air was dry and warm from the tiny fire fluttering in the hearth. And, too, there was a lingering, familiar scent in the air. The scent was not particularly comforting, not exactly, but it brought with it an undeniable sense of relief. All of it, taken together, felt a lot like home. It was so pleasant and so much like a dream that Scout thought perhaps the afterlife wasn’t going to be so bad.

Then he sneezed, twice, hard. It sent shocks of pain rolling through him and dropped him into a fit of coughing that lasted nearly a minute. His lungs and stomach ached when he finally stopped, and by then he had noticed his hands and arms were still filthy from going through the woods, and how desperately he wanted a drink of water, and how every beat of his heart made the wound on his back throb in pain.

So either the afterlife was bullshit, or he wasn’t actually dead. When he lifted his head and looked at the bedside table to find another full glass of water, along with a crumbly handful of shelled peanuts, he settled on the second option. The peanuts scratched as they went down only partially-chewed, and the salt on them got into the cracks in his lips, but the water was cool and sweet and dribbled down his chin as he drank it too quickly.

When Scout pulled himself out of bed he did not fall at all. His leg didn’t even hurt that much; he had sort of an idea that it should, for some reason, but couldn’t place why exactly. Nothing hindered him on his way to the bathroom, where he pissed and took another long drink from the faucet, and when he was done he stopped in the bathroom’s threshold, to look out at the rest of the house and really see it.

In front of him was the parlor or den or whatever you might call it of what looked like a bona fide log cabin. It was squat and it sprawled, morphing into a half-partitioned kitchen across the room, a wooden table and chairs sitting cater-cornered to the orange couch in the middle of everything. A stone fireplace was burning along busily to his right, while to his left the door to his room appeared to be the first of a handful down a short hallway. Haphazardly-placed candles burning down in foggy glass cups lit the rest of the place. He could see what he recognized as Pyro’s pack and jacket sitting on the floor near the fire, and gave them a wide berth as he went and sunk down into the couch, careful not to let his back touch the back cushions.

He did not intend to drift back off. It snuck up on him, a bit. Not dead, maybe, but still exhausted, and Scout blinked out of consciousness like a flame being put out.

When he next woke it was sharp and sudden, though why he could not have said. The candles in the glasses had been extinguished, as had the one in the hearth. That smell again, faint. Darkness had fallen, and the only thing that caught his eye as he blinked and shook himself was something bright blue, glowing.

He tried to say something. Nothing doing; it tumbled out of his mouth and cotton-dry tongue in a tangled mess. There was a quiet mechanical noise, and then light. Esau’s chassis was swallowed up from beneath in shadow, the beam from the light it was now projecting into Scout’s face failing to reach that far.

He flinched, though from the light or from Esau itself he was not sure, withdrawing further into the couch. An instant later he had pulled away again, pawing at the wad of gauze taped to his back. “Sorry,” Esau said, stepping back.

“Um,” Scout got out groggily. His head throbbed at him, a rubber-band pressure in his temples, and there was something in his lap. A shirt, he realized, a long-sleeved turtleneck in gray that felt warm and substantial in his hands. Shivering, he pulled it on. “G, get that outta my eyes, willya?” Esau obeyed, and he groaned. “God. Hhg. What’re … what time is it?”

“A quarter after one, or thereabouts. Did I wake you?”

“Maybe. I dunno.” The sleep began to lift from his mind, much to his distress. Sleep was peaceful. Sleep meant he wasn’t in pain. But lift it did, and he swallowed and it hurt, with his mouth dry as sawdust. Esau turned to watch him as he got up and stumbled back to the bathroom for more water, its light now pointing at the ground.

“How are you feeling?” Esau asked, after he had wiped the last of the water off his chin. Scout felt himself grimace, staring down into the sink.

“Alive. Shit. Shit an’ damn, that—where’s Pyro?” he said, turning. “Friggin‘—messin’ with my damn head, told me I was gonna die last night, lying little—”

“I don’t know,” Esau said, cutting Scout off. “Why do you think she was lying?”

“Seriously? Do I look dead to you, pal, c’mon! You’re smart enough t’talk, figured you’d be smart enough to figure out the difference between a dead guy and a live one, sheesh.”

“That only means she was wrong. She seemed very convinced you were going to die when I spoke to her.”

“Great, yeah, take her side, sure. Ain’t like I got enough problems, got the stupid robot gangin’ up on me too, screw you. You’re just like the rest of ’em.”

“The rest of who?” Esau said, but Scout had already stalked past him and yanked open the front door, stepping into the chilly night air. Heavy quadruped footsteps followed him out.

Walking immediately showed itself to be an exercise in discomfort. Every muscle was sore from disuse, and he felt stiff and slow as he made his way down the porch. Even breathing was a labor, and the smoky haze in the air kept making him cough. When one of these coughing fits made him stop and lean against the side of a building, Esau wheeled around as if to watch him. Creep. “Should you be up?”

“Been—hhhgk. Been in bed God knows how long. Might as well be up.”

“You were very sick. You passed out when we arrived.”

“What? Didn’t either,” Scout said. As soon as he did it occurred to him that he actually could not remember arriving in town; his last clear memory was almost walking into Pyro’s back, and looking over her shoulder to see a titanic footprint. “Doesn’t matter. ’M fine now, anyway, oughta be moving. Oughta eat something. Don’t guess you know where there’s any food.”

“Pyro found—”

“Can, God, can we quit talkin’ about Pyro? For like a minute?”

Esau went silent. Around them the night was eerily silent, too, bereft of birds or wind. Then, in the tinny, strange voice again: “The only thing I’ve seen her do to you is try to help you. She has been checking on you all day. But yes, if that’s what you want. I will.”

“Gee, thanks,” Scout muttered, but the venom he had anticipated was not in it. He was thinking, now, realizing pieces of his memory were foggy and feverish, trying to sort them together. If he pushed he could nearly remember falling in the dirt and being pulled upright. He could nearly remember last night, beyond the stark recollection of being told he was going to die. Candlelight and talking. And his own voice, weak and desperate, begging not to be left alone, begging her to stay.

And Pyro, staying.

 

* * *

 

The couch had been taken, with Scout sprawled all across it, and that left Pyro with precious few other options for a bed. Around sundown she had given it up and gone to sleep at the desk in Scout’s room again.

Or, she had tried to sleep. Mostly what she had done was mull over the night previous, and about how Scout was supposed to be dead. Probably it was a good thing she hadn’t gone through with mercy-killing him, now. On the other hand, now she had to live with the knowledge that Scout had intimate knowledge of her childhood. That was not what was supposed to happen. June and the tiny Pennsylvanian town where Pyro had spent the better part of ten years were supposed to have died with him.

But, she finally concluded as she watched one of the candles she had lit melt down into oblivion, she was glad he hadn’t died. She had enough ghosts already.

Sleep claimed her, in the unexpected way it always did. When she awoke it was to bird song, gentle and sweet.

All the candles had burned out, though smoke still lay heavy in the air. The forest fire, still miles and miles out. Yesterday she had climbed to the top of one of the buildings to get a look at it, relieved to see that it had turned away. It was an aromatherapy all on its own, though the dryness of it made her cough and thus threw her further into wakefulness as she pulled herself to her feet and found her way out of the room.

And there was Scout, awake. He was sitting on the floor, bent over one outstretched leg, the way she’d seen him do before matches or runs. It was light enough in the cabin that she caught the way his gaze flickered up to her for an instant before dropping his forehead back to his shin.

“You’re still alive, then,” Pyro said.

“Mmn. Mm-hm.”

“Fine. If that bandage isn’t changed it’s going to get infected again. Take your shirt off.”

This garnered another, longer look, but she was already striding past him, going to dig out the gauze and antiseptic.

Her bedside manner was nothing to be proud of. After Scout had peeled off his shirt he snapped at her more than once as she stripped away the bandage and cleaned the wound. His skin was uncomfortably clammy, and the burn was still an ugly sight. It was raw and red, but healing. No necrosis in sight.

She taped down the clean gauze and got to her feet, wiping her hands off on her jeans. Scout pulled the turtleneck she’d dropped on him the night before back over his head. “Here,” she said as he did, rounding the couch to reach the table she had slowly been stockpiling supplies onto. “I already took everything I want, you can have whatever’s left. There’re enough supplies for you to get back on your own.”

“Where’re you goin’?”

“I’m leaving with Esau tomorrow morning. I’m going to help it with whatever it is it’s doing.”

Scout got to his feet, following after. He cast about the table for a few seconds, looking lost. “You found all this stuff an’ you’re still goin’ with it instead’a back? How come?”

“Well, I don’t know how to get out of the forest by myself.” Pyro paused, looking over the table, and then reached out and grabbed a certain folded brown paper. “Here, maybe this will tell you how to get out. I can’t read it.”

Scout took it as she offered it. “A map?” She shrugged; Scout had already spread it out on the table, all his attention suddenly focused on the wrinkled paper and its mystery lines. “This’s a map of the town,” he said slowly, running one finger along one weaved dashed line. “I think, anyway. Says this is Kewaunee, Township Of. Where’d you get this?”

Wordlessly, she pointed to the small white door. He followed her gesture, chewing his lip, suddenly interested, suddenly engaged. He gave her one last glance before trotting over and opening the door. For a lack of anything better to do, Pyro followed. By the time she had reached the door he had already wandered inside, sticking close to the walls, gingerly touching the maps as he went. “These’re all of here, I think,” he said absently, a minute later. “Yeah, it is. Kewaunee. These all look like my maps from Dustbowl and Badwater. These’re mines, this must’a been a mining town, see?”

Pyro did not see. Pyro saw a continued smear of incomprehensible lines. “How can you tell?”

“Been makin’ maps for the team a long damn time, lots of mines ‘round where we fight.“ Opening the map she had given him again, he spread it out on the wall and looked it over. ”Big damn mines, too. Must’a been a real big coal seam down there or somethin’, these look like a maze.”

“They are,” said a third voice, and the two mercenaries looked up to see Esau watching them from the doorway. It could not have fit through into the room if it had tried. “That’s the route we’ll be taking. I have a method of homing, but it would be very easy to get lost without it.”

“I liked that thing better when I could hear it comin’,” Scout said, under his breath, and Pyro bit back a wry smile.

 

* * *

 

So Scout had pulled together a pack of supplies for himself. Pyro and Esau had gone off somewhere together, outside, leaving Scout to himself and his thoughts. An unideal situation; his thoughts picked at him and picked at him, the way they always did when he was left alone for too long. Things like the fight with Pyro by the river, like Roger in some hospital bed or some grave in Boston, like lying on his stomach listening as Pyro quietly explained how a panic attack in front of a firehouse had gotten her more-or-less adopted. _I don’t remember what I said that changed her mind about me,_ he could hear her saying. _She meant it when she said she didn’t like kids. I think I was a hard kid to like to start with._

Pyro had said she had a brother, he thought. Dead, drowned in a river. So they had something in common, after all.

And then his pack was full, the top rolled up and secured. The straps were sturdy and the weight manageable. He stood motionless at the table for a minute or two, just looking down at it, wondering what to do with himself next. He still had no compass, though he was well enough now that finding his way by the sun would be viable, and surely the fire would have petered out by the time he got anywhere near it.

When Scout looked up again, his gaze drifting to the window, he discovered it had begun to rain.

The pack in one hand, he wandered out to the front porch and sat with his back against the house, watching the raindrops grow heavier and more insistent. He watched them patter and jump along the empty houses, and watched the edge of the porch grow darker as the rain crept further along it, toward his feet. It stormed along wildly for maybe a quarter of an hour before all at once it seemed to burn itself out, giving way to thick fog and half-hearted sprinkling. And there, in the fog, motion caught his eye. Of course it was Pyro.

Wherever she had been, she had been out long enough to get soaked. Esau was nowhere in sight. From his spot on the porch he could see her walking with her arms hugging her chest, head bowed, her hair plastered against her scalp. She looked small, unreal. He tried to picture her at fourteen, pushing a stolen bike along a strange sidewalk in a strange city.

And then she was there, the porch thumping with her footsteps as she got herself beneath the overhang. Water streamed off her from every angle. She was shivering, or perhaps more correctly shaking. She swept past him without a glance. He heard a wet thump inside the house and looked over his shoulder to see her jacket in a pile by the entryway, forming a puddle.

The rain came to a stop, an hour or so later, leaving behind only fog and a wet and shining world. Scout got to his feet, and went inside. He dropped his back by the door, and because it was at his feet, he picked up the sodden green jacket and hung it on the door handle. Pyro, lying on the couch and staring up at the ceiling, took no notice.

The rain had filled the silence some, before. Now it was gone, and all Scout could really hear well was his breathing. “Hey,” he said eventually, pawing at his hair, “hey, so, you’re really followin’ that thing into God-knows-where? The mines, or wherever?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t, I guess I got sick in all that, I didn’t ever catch why it wanted to talk to you.”

“It wants to sabotage the rest of the robots, or something like that. I don’t really know. I guess I don’t care. But I’m following it either way.” She cast a glance toward him, and the dark circles that had been beneath her eyes for as long as he could remember seemed darker. “You might as well tell Pauling I’m dead, when you find her. I don’t know if I’m going to come back.”

“Well—I mean. I don’t get it. Why?” And then, tentatively, “Is this like when Engineer went AWOL?”

Pyro laughed, a sound like dry grass rustling. “Maybe, yeah,” she said, slowly getting to her feet. She crossed the cabin, stopping where Scout had hung her jacket up, and fished something out of one of the interior pockets. “Esau gave me this the night it found us,” she said, and held it out to him.

Curious now, Scout took it, and found it was a shabby copy of a photograph. It was not particularly remarkable. The lens was a little out of focus and the subjects little crooked in the frame, catching only a glimpse of the overgrown lawn in the background. In the fore there were two figures: a young man with strong cheekbones and dark hair cropped unevenly around his face, and a wide grin, crouching with his arm slung over the shoulder of a little girl peering dubiously up at the camera. This he scarcely noticed; he was looking at the boy, glancing up from it to Pyro’s face more than once. “You said last night you had a brother,” he began, uncertain.

Pyro nodded, fidgeting with the hem of her shirt. “We’d just gotten back from the park,” she said, and sounded like she might be back there, stepping through time. “We’d go and feed ducks at the pond, the two of us. Just down the lane with all the weeds and sunflowers. We got ice cream that day, and my hands were still sticky. I remember that. I remember our dad taking that picture.”

“What was his name?”

This time she just shook her head, and exhaled. “You can still read. Right?”

It took Scout a moment to process the question, still examining the uncanny resemblance between Pyro and her nameless brother. “I mean, I figure so.”

“Turn it over,” she said, and he did. “I haven’t been able to read anything since the thing with Clarence. What does it say?”

Scout looked. He read the lone word written in block letters twice, looked back at Pyro, whose face was a mask of exhaustion, and then back down at the letters. “You don’t know what this says? Really?”

“I wouldn’t be asking you if I did.”

“I mean,” he started. Stopped. Tried again. “It just says ‘kingbird.’”

At this Pyro’s expression finally changed, her brow furrowing as she squinted at him. “That’s—that’s it?”

“Yeah.”

“Kingbird,” she said, taking the photo back as he held it out to her. “What’s a kingbird? I don’t—what?”

Scout rolled his shoulders in a shrug, watching her while she stared at the word she could not read. “Esau didn’t tell you nothin’ about it when it gave you that?”

“No. God, no. Kingbird, hell. All it said was that it had more of these. That it would give them to me if I helped it with whatever it’s doing. I’m probably going to end up as dead as Engineer.” Something flared in her, tired and angry, a visible rush of emotion over her face. “Bet they’re all as useful as _kingbird._ Stupid.” She put the picture into the pocket of her jeans, and all at once sagged. The floor creaked under her as she trudged back to the couch and dropped down into it without another word.

Silence, then, for a while. Scout lingered where he was, slouched against the fireplace, looking out the still-open front door as the fog rolled slowly by. The next time he glanced over at Pyro she had pulled out the photo again, her eyes devouring her past as if she had never seen it before. Probably she hadn’t. Scout shifted his weight, looking down at his feet, and felt his burn throb, just enough to make sure he knew it was still here. “So, uh,” he said. “How come is it I’m still here? I mean—alive.”

“How should I know?”

“You said—”

“Yeah, well, I was wrong. It was your lucky day, or something. Enjoy it.”

“But you weren’t messing around with me. Right? You really figured I was dying.”

The sigh that left her now was long and frustrated, accentuated by the way she pressed the heel of her free hand against one eye. “You should be dead. You should have been dead yesterday, by now you should be ashes because I was going to cremate the house with you in it because I don’t know what else to do with a corpse. But you aren’t. You’re still alive. For some reason you got another chance, and you’ll never get to know why. You only get to know that it happened.”

When she had begun her words had been hollow, sharp things. By the time she finished they had taken sudden shape, full and heavy, laced with some unspoken truth. Scout examined it a while, seeking the shape of it, the underside. Each time he looked at Pyro again, at the way she was still lying stiff and tense with one eye forced shut and the other locked on the face of a person some twenty years dead, she looked a little more raw, a little more human. It was a hard thing to look at. Eventually he had to look away.

“Just,” he said at last, for once in his life picking his words with care, “that night, I mean. I thought about it, I guess my memory of it isn’t too sharp. But both of us figured I was dyin‘, right, and, um. Only it’s I remember you didn’t leave me there all alone, you stuck around, and I figure you had about every reason to not do that but you did it anyway. Just. I was real grateful for your doin’ that. That’s all.”

Pyro said nothing, and in another few seconds Scout had crossed back over to the door of his room, opening it and shutting it behind him quietly. Outside, the fog began to dissipate.


	25. 22: THROUGH THE LOOKING-GLASS

* * *

 

 

 

 

  

 

_(a/n: This chapter touches briefly on themes of racially-motivated violence.)_

 

* * *

 

 

“I don’t understand,” Pyro said, early the next morning, as she watched Scout trying to find a way to keep his pack on his shoulders without it touching the gauze on his back. “I told you why I’m going with Esau. What are you coming for?”

“You said it yourself, right, yesterday, you don’t know how to get outta here? Me neither. I got no compass, no map, that fire’s still making it hard to get my bearings.” He shrugged, all casual. “Besides, we go blow up them robots where it hurts, it’s that much less fighting we gotta do when we do go back, the quicker I can go back home. Might as well try it.”

She chewed her lower lip, eyes still steady on him as he adjusted his jacket and the white baseball cap he had fished out of a closet somewhere in town. He had apparently found a razor somewhere, too, because the patchy stubble on his jaw was now gone. He had the map she had originally given him in one hand, held gently and folded carefully. Sniper had once told her Scout had a thing about maps, and she had seen him drawing them once or twice before. “Kid knocks ’em out like nothing I’ve ever seen,” Sniper had said to her one brisk day in Badwater, one long and bony finger pointing their youngest teammate out. Scout was sitting on a stump in the meager shade of a hackberry tree, hunched over a massive sheaf of paper, with a pen in one hand and a ruler in the other. “We call him Scout for a reason, see. Could drop him off in the middle of a labyrinth and he’d find a way out.”

This did not do anything to help explain why Scout was actually coming along. But, Pyro supposed, it was best not to look a gift horse in the mouth. The extra manpower was probably going to be useful. She still wasn’t sure if she should be watching her back around him, anymore, though. Not after the last few days.

But Scout got his bag sorted out, and then together they stepped out into the bright morning sunlight that streamed across Kewaunee in pools and ribbons, out to the mines.

The entrance was a good ten-minute walk out of town, traveling northeast (according to Scout). There were old signs of life along the way: tire tracks, spray-painted X’s on some of the trees, a stray plastic wrapper here or there. Once they even passed by an old and rusting mine cart, wheelless and sitting suspended on red bricks. The town was all but vanished behind trees once they got to where they were going. Esau was waiting for them, and as they approached Pyro took a moment to digest the dissonance of the sleek lines of the machine next to the rough-hewn angles of the mineshaft. “Ready?” Esau said, turning to face them as whatever passed for its ears informed it that they were there.

“I guess,” Pyro said. “Scout’s coming, apparently.”

By all logic, a robot without even a face should not be able to size someone up. Esau managed, though, giving Scout the once-over. “The more the merrier,” it said. “Welcome aboard. You’re both prepared, then? Once we go in, there won’t be an easy way back to the surface.”

Pyro nodded; Scout shifted his weight, returning the look Esau had given him. “I figure you better oughta give us the what’s what before we go all _Center of the Earth_ , yeah? What’re we doin’ once we get down there?” Gonna be blind enough down there, hell."

“That’s fair,” Esau conceded. “We are headed to the core computer, deep underground. It directs all the machines’ motions by a satellite system. If we destroy the computer system and collapse the mine, it will cut the operation off at the head.”

“Back at Mannworks we thought you were the one directing them,” Pyro said. “We shot a satellite dish off you.”

“That was not me,” Esau said. “Instructions can be routed through my model, though.”

“Is bringin’ this thing down gonna take you out too?” said Scout.

“No. I’m self-sufficient.”

The questions kept building; how long of a trip is it? Most of a day’s journey. How deep underground are we going? Some two-hundred feet. Would they meet any other robots? Possibly. “I won’t say there’s nothing to worry about,” it concluded at the end of their interrogation, “but it should all be pretty well in hand.”

Pyro looked at Scout, and found he was looking back at her, with an equal amount of uncertainty. “Well,” Pyro said, at last, “I guess I only have one more question. Why do you need us to destroy it? Why can’t you do it?”

She had never yet seen Esau do anything like laugh, and when it issued a low chuckled it caught her off-guard. It was unlike its normal voice, natural-sounding and organic, but clearly recorded, like it had stolen the sound from someone else. “I’ve tried,” it said, before she could quite recover. “It’s guarded by small brigade on the outside chamber, and inside is a magnetic field that would fry me if I got too close. I can manage the other machines. But I need you to disable the field.”

This, in Pyro’s mind, only gave rise to more questions. But the absurdity of it all already felt like too much. She was in this deep already, wasn’t she? “Alright,” she said with a dry laugh of her own, shifting her pack on her shoulders and looking up at the clear sky, she hoped, not for the last time. “Great. Sounds easy. Let’s go be heroes.”

 

* * *

 

On, off. On, off.

Pyro had the distinct impression the constant clicking and sparking she was doing with her lighter was getting on Scout’s nerves, but in the half-light from the beam shining from Esau’s chassis it was hard to tell. It wasn’t going to stop her, though.The mineshaft Esau had led them down was cramped and cold. Their footsteps were muffled in the dirt, save for the occasional clang of Esau’s feet striking the cart track running up from the depths of the earth. Even at her rather average height Pyro found herself have to bow her head to keep from hitting it on the support beams. About twenty minutes in, the space suddenly opened out, and she very quickly decided she had preferred the ducking: the walls and ceiling sunk away into black spaces, and the angle of the mine began to cant downward more palpably.

On, off, on.

Esau moved at a steady and unfaltering pace. Pyro had soon fallen behind some fifteen or twenty paces. She didn’t really notice Scout had, too, until he spoke. “You, you figure my back is gonna be okay, then?”

Her Zippo snapped at the air as she clapped it shut. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t have any idea what’s going on with you, except maybe your name should be Jesus. Maybe respawn made you immortal all the time. For all I know it’s not even going to scar.”

“Oh, well.” It wasn’t exactly that she couldn’t see Scout in the near-dark—she could, but he was a dark silhouette against a black background. She was not sure if this was comforting or frightening. “That’d … that’d be …”

“The word you’re looking for is ‘good.’”

“Yeah,” Scout said. It felt like he was watching her, but she could not tell. “You didn’t have those scars, before, right. When you met my brother. I know you didn’t have that one on your face, anyway.”

Something about this made her snort derisively. A stolen glance informed her that Scout was indeed watching her, and so she shrugged her left arm out of her jacket. The lighter popped to life again, and she held it close enough to her arm, near the inside of her elbow, to highlight a patch of wrinkled skin. “I had two scars before I met your brother,” she said, tapping a finger on her arm. “This one was from a candle. I was eight and lit my bed on fire by accident.” And then, tilting her head to one side and holding the lighter up to an old, fading gash under her right ear, right around the jawbone: “And this one. Fourteen, I think. Fourteen or fifteen. From the first time somebody tried to kill me.”

“You—what? Fifteen, what? Liar,” Scout said. Pyro clicked the lighter shut, dropping them back into near darkness as up ahead Esau soldiered on. “Unless you got on the murder train early. What’d you do was so bad someone tried killing you at fifteen?” asked Scout, and she glanced at him again, and saw still an anonymous outline.

“Not much,” she said, presently. “Somebody just didn’t like me. Mostly they didn’t like that I was an Indian.”

“Oh,” Scout said, after a pause. “Well—well so what happened?”

 

* * *

 

**195X  
** **PENNSYLVANIA**

The runaway had read _Peter Pan_ exactly once, and hadn’t been terribly taken with it. She didn’t find magic very interesting, and Captain Hook seemed sort of stupid. The nun at the girls’ home that had given it to her had been strangely enthusiastic about the Piccaninny “tribe” in it, and for this reason the runaway had agreed to try it; but once the book circulated among the other girls, the runaway was called nothing but Tiger Lily for a solid month.

It was some two months after grudgingly agreeing to let the runaway stay at her house that June got bored of calling her things like Pocahontas or Sacajawea or Hiawatha. The runaway did not particularly care for these names, either, but she could handle them, if only because June switched between them a lot. But when one morning at breakfast June said, “You wanna grab the milk out of the fridge for me, Tiger Lily?”, the runaway dropped the bowl she had been washing into the sink with a clatter and snapped: “I have a name.”

The runaway did not really talk back much. Particularly not to June, who reminded her frequently that she could kick her out at any time. The surprise was evident in June’s face for all of ten seconds before she dropped back into a disinterested sort of expression. “Yeah? You and God,” June snorted, shaking open her box of cereal. “So what? You want a medal?”

“I want you to use my name.”

“Tough shit, kiddo. You live under my roof and eat my food. I get to call you Mud if I feel like it.” The runaway muttered something under her breath, turning back to the dishes. “What was that?”

“Then call me Mud,” the runaway said, picking the bowl back up. June called her Mud for the next two weeks, but it was better than Tiger Lily.

It wasn’t all bad, though, living with June. June Wagner was a firefighter—which the runaway viewed with equal parts amazement and disgust. She had never heard of a female firefighter before (which was the amazement) and she disagreed with the idea of putting fires out on principle (which was the disgust). June worked multi-day shifts at the firehouse, generally leaving the runaway alone for long stretches of time, and because it was summer no one gave her a hard time about cutting class. This town was so small the runaway didn’t think it even had a truancy officer. All in all, this left her with a lot of time to herself, and that was exactly what she wanted. Maybe life was a little less predictable or safe than it had been with her foster family, but she enjoyed herself a lot more, and it was pretty infrequent that she went hungry.

June’s terms, which she had laid out to the runaway after a few fruitless days of searching for someone else to foist her off onto, had been as follows: June would give her food and a place to live, and the runaway would take up the chores that June’s job left her too worn out to do. It was a good arrangement, although the runaway had thought of Cinderella at first and felt mildly worried. June didn’t have nearly such high standards as the wicked stepmother, though. As long as things looked more or less decent, there wasn’t a problem.

The whole situation left the runaway feeling very grown-up. June never curbed her language around her or talked to her like a child, and her newfound independence was a breath of fresh air. She didn’t have a schedule mandated by people she didn’t like, except to make sure the garbage was taken out Tuesday mornings. She didn’t know anyone in this town, and so she didn’t have to worry about paying attention to anyone. Back with her foster family or in the orphanage it always seemed like someone was in her face over something, constantly, and until now she had never really gotten to experience being on her own for any stretch of time. She found she preferred it to nearly anything else, and would spend her days alternatingly at the library, reading, or in June’s garage, fiddling with a dusty set of tools and scrap metal, and starting fires in the trash bins.

Not much happened that summer. There was a day when someone recognized the bike she had stolen as she was riding by. Any qualms the rightful owner might have had about fighting girls were apparently thrown out the window if said girl was an Indian. That afternoon the runaway limped back home with no bike, a black eye, and some words she had never heard before ringing in her ears. June had been sitting at the kitchen table when she got back. The last five or six times the runaway had seen her, June had ignored her entirely, so it was rather a surprise when June noticed there was something wrong. “Did you meet some cowboys, brat?” she asked the runaway, who was pulling a bag of frozen vegetables from the freezer to put against her eye.

The runaway shrugged. “Just a fight. They took my bike.”

“And you didn’t get any scalps to show for it?”

“There were three of them.”

“That’s a shit excuse. You need to learn how to fight.”

That was how, a few minutes later, June dragged her out into the garage and took swings at her until she had more or less pummeled the basics of fist-fighting into her. When the runaway went to bed, she had a sore ear and a split lip on top of the black eye, but she did feel like she had learned something.

 

* * *

 

The best perk about living with June, the runaway discovered that fall, was that June did not make her go to school. “You’ve read half that library already,” she had said, when the runaway asked her about it once as they were clearing the roof gutters of fallen leaves. “I’ve seen you dragging those damn books home, new ones every three days. What’s some limp-dicked science teacher going to tell you that you can’t find out for yourself?”

“Not much,” the runaway said, secretly pleased.

“Yeah, so. Keep your nose clean and nobody’s gonna give a rat’s ass what you do, kiddo. It’s always worked for me.”

It was good advice, and it worked. Apart from the incident with the bike, and the semi-frequent crass remarks about the color of her skin—which more often than not came from June, which made them slightly more bearable—apart from those, life was uneventful. And that was the runaway’s life for the next six months, and she was content. Holidays came and went, which she hardly noticed, except for Halloween. (She awkwardly taught herself to sew with some borrowed needles and thread, and armed with no fewer than three stolen dime-store masks and a dark cloak, went and gathered enough candy to last her until at least April.) Thanksgiving went ignored, and as June was apparently Jewish and unobservant, Christmas and Hanukkah both came and went without fanfare.

It was early January when both the furnace and the water pipes of June’s house broke down in the space of two days. The place was rendered uninhabitable until they were fixed, and the repairmen would not be able to make it out for some time. This was how the runaway found herself living in the fire station for three weeks, with June and all the other fire fighters.

It was a fascinating change of pace. So long as she didn’t get in the way, she was given the run of the building, and she took full advantage of that fact. Her first discovery was mostly that the fire department was broke; something new seemed to stop working every day, and the equipment was all stopgap and patchwork at best. June’s fireman’s coat was threadbare around the elbows and her helmet was dented in five places, and according to her both of them were older than the runaway was.

Still, the station was full of interesting things. She prowled around the vast, convoluted bodies of the fire engines. She met the firehouse dog, not a dalmatian but a grand old weimaraner with a scarred nose and a jagged splash of white fur on his chest. According to June he had been rescued from a junkyard fire on Halloween night some years ago. “What’s his name?” the runaway asked.

“Dog. Mutt. I don’t know, kid, I don’t even like dogs.”

This was not a point in June’s favor, the runaway thought as she scratched the hound’s neck, and decided he would be called Silver.

She eavesdropped everywhere she could. She asked questions of everyone who would listen. She had read a handful of books that talked about fire and firefighters in the libraries both here and in her foster family’s hometown, but those had largely been full of information she didn’t especially care about. Here, though. Here she had an entire fleet of firefighters to interrogate, some of whom had been doing this job for over ten years. She wanted to know about how the fire trucks worked, and how to go down the fire pole the right way, and what the coats were made of, and what it was like to be in a burning building. She even wanted to know about the fire hoses and the hydrants, mainly because she felt better about things she didn’t like if she knew how they worked.

She learned pretty quickly who would entertain her questions and who wouldn’t. The man who had turned the hose on her, whose name was Joshua, was among those who wouldn’t. The runaway had made a point of remembering his name so she could avoid him more efficiently. There was a skinny Irishman with glasses who liked to talk about the trucks, and a man with tattoos all over his body who would gravely and slowly answer her questions about burns and how to treat them, and a middle-aged black man with graying hair, named Donovan, who had a knack for storytelling. Donovan in particular got to be her favorite, partly because he had an endless supply of stories about his time as a firefighter, and partly because he had an endless supply of patience with her. From Donovan she learned about how dangerous smoke was, and how kitchen fires usually started and were usually the cause of house fires, followed by radiators and cigarettes. (“It’s not worth it, smoking,” Donovan said more than once. “If it doesn’t kill the people around you, it’ll kill you for sure.”) And Donovan even answered the questions that had made other people—the other firefighters, and some librarians—look at her strangely, and stop talking to her. These were the ones about the fires themselves, how to start them, how to handle them, how to control them. She had always gotten the feeling they were questions she wasn’t supposed to be asking, but she had never been clear on the reason. But when she asked Donovan, all he had said was, “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Well, are you planning on setting any fires?”

“No,” the runaway said patiently, because she had learned a long time ago that was the only acceptable answer to give. The runaway was always planning on setting fires. That was what she did. That was why she was asking, so she could do so more efficiently. Not fires that would hurt anyone, she didn’t want to hurt anyone. But she would gather dry brush and paper and anything that would burn well and put it in a tall stove pot she had scavenged from June’s neglected cupboards. She would fill it up and then take it somewhere lonely, somewhere with a lot of cement, and drop in a match and watch it burn. It was just something she had to do. She had never had an accident, and she never would, because she was smart and she was careful, and she never looked away from her fires anyway.

So Donovan had told her the things she wanted to know, because he said it was better for people to know things than to not know them. The runaway liked this philosophy. He told her about how they could tell if a fire was arson or not, and what you did to make sure a bonfire didn’t get out of hand, and that there was a thing some people had called “pyromania” that made them crazy and made them burn things they shouldn’t. The runaway thought this was very interesting, and was glad she did not have it. She could control herself, about fire.

Donovan was great. But all the firemen worked in shifts, and after a few days Donovan left. The new person, Victor, was a tall, clean-shaven white man with startlingly white teeth. The very first day he arrived, after breakfast, June cornered the runaway alone in a side room and said in sharp-edged syllables, “Listen to me and listen good. You do not speak to Victor. You do not even be in the same room with him alone, or,” and she raised a hand, sudden and high, a visible threat, “or I will break your goddamn nose.”

June had never hit the runaway before, outside of the time in the garage, where it had been sort of necessary with learning how to defend herself. The runaway had gone very still, eyes locked on her caretaker’s hand. “Why?”

“First because I said so.” June did not lower her hand. “Second, because I _goddamn said so._ And if I find out otherwise, I’ll put you on your own personal Trail of Tears, got it?”

The hand dropped. The runaway mumbled something in the affirmative, startled and a little afraid. June had grunted in assent, and left.

As always, though, she bounced back. And “because I said so” was not a very good reason. She resorted to asking around, asking what the deal with Victor was. The tattooed man was the only one who gave her a decent answer. “Yeah, I’d say old battle-axe is right. Safer for you. Victor don’t like your kind.”

“Indians?”

“That’s right.”

“So? He doesn’t have to like me.”

The tattooed man had raised one eyebrow. “Sure,” he told her,“ but if that was the only problem, Wagner wouldn’t’a cared.”

It was two days before they went back to June’s house, mid-February, when the runaway found out exactly what June and the tattooed man had meant. She had been pulling her things together, which all had managed to get strewn in out-of-the-way places all around the fire station in her three weeks there. Now she was in the break room, where June had first brought her that day in July. It was always a mess, she had learned, and the runaway thought she had maybe left some of her socks here. She had found no socks on the west side of the room, and had moved her search to the east side, near the jukebox and the fire pole and the gaping hole in the floor.

It was the noise, probably. Someone had left the jukebox on, playing some quiet radio station. And it had been sleeting outside, not quite cold enough for snow, and the heavy rain drumming the windows was an unwelcome distraction. If it hadn’t been for these she might have been listening, and heard it when the door to the third-floor break room opened and shut. As it was, she remained on her hands and knees, near the hole in the floor, searching.

A shadow falling over her was the only warning she got. It darkened her field of view, and she lifted her gaze just in time to see a huge hand reaching for her, and beyond it, Victor’s face. She froze, a deer in headlights, and of course the hand caught her. Of course it drove her backwards with ease. Of course she fell.

She glimpsed the second floor for an instant as she dropped, she felt her knees clip the edge of the hole and her head smack against the pole. Then she was turned around somehow, and with a vivid explosion of pain something tore open the skin under her right ear. She cried out when she hit the ground floor, cement cushioned only by a two-inch pad at the base of the pole. Something hot and coppery flashed in her mouth.

She lay where she had fallen as the pain caught up with her. She stared fixedly ahead, unseeing, only barely aware of what had happened. She had fallen. She had been pushed. And Victor had just slid down the pole after her.

All of this, though, took a back seat to the shout that reached her ears and instant later. There were hands upon her again, but this time they were pulling her up into a sitting position. The runaway blinked and realized there were tears in her eyes and hot blood streaming down her neck. Someone was speaking. “Kiddo. Shit, kid, look at me. Can you hear me?” She lifted her hand to the side of her neck. Her fingers came away red, and she gazed at them stupidly. By the time June had gotten her propped all the way up, the blood was running freely. “Don’t move,” June said.

“What?” the runaway got out, thickly.

“Don’t move.”

“Is she okay?” said a new voice, deep and smooth. Victor. “I tried to stop her, but she got too close to the hole.”

June said nothing, not at first. She had her eyes on the runaway, one arm tight around her shoulders. For her part the runaway had mostly gone limp. She couldn’t seem to get her thoughts straight, everything hurt. “Yeah?” June said, eventually, the word like two stones grinding against one another. “Is that what happened?”

The question was not directed at Victor, though it took the runaway a few seconds to realize it. She swallowed down more blood and tried to make her eyes focus. The words came out like molasses. “He pushed me.”

June’s stare had not abated. Now Victor was speaking, a swift, affronted torrent the runaway could not entirely follow: _doesn’t know what she’s talking about, tried to help her, not my fault, little liar._ June got to her feet, leaving the runaway to slump over onto her knees. Things still felt far away, distant, but she did manage to lift her head in time to see June’s entire body twist in one sharp movement to throw itself behind the punch she slammed into Victor’s jaw.

 

* * *

 

“An’ then what?” asked Scout.

“She broke his jaw,” Pyro said. “Laid right into him. I never saw him again. Then she beat my ass when we got home.”

“Damn,” Scout said, and for a while that was all. Absently, Pyro put her fingers back up to the scar beneath her ear. She had nearly forgotten about it. She was surprised she remembered at all. When he piped back up with, “Somebody’s jaw gettin’ broke over you, that means somethin’,” she drew her hand away as if caught at something.

“I guess so.”

“Sure it does. Hey, but, so, your, your thing with, uh, with fire. I haven’t ever got that, I mean. It’s just fire. It’s hot and it burns stuff and I guess sometimes it’s pretty. But you, it ain’t just that with you, is it? I’ve seen how you get about it. Is that—is that how you got all burned up?”

She could practically feel his discomfort, in the asking. At first that was all she felt, because she didn’t know how to feel on her own, given the question. Given the question from _Scout._ They walked another thirty paces before she found a response. “Yes. It is. And even if I did try to explain you wouldn’t get it.”

“Well, how come?”

“Because nobody gets it. I don’t even get it half the time. It’s just something about me that is, and it’s dangerous and it’s just about ruined my life, and I’m stuck with it. And I don’t really want to talk about it.”

Ahead of them, Esau had paused. Pyro looked up at it and found it had stopped in front of a broad, shallow-looking channel of water rippling over a dip in the path and disappearing into the darkness. It was maybe fifteen feet across, and as they caught up with it Esau started sloshing through. The water only reached up to the first joints in its legs. Beside her, Scout had stopped to pull his socks and shoes off. Pyro followed suit, a little slowly, and after she had rolled up her jeans and grabbed her boots she took an uneasy step into the water.

It splashed up and around her shins and knees, frigid and slimy. Rocks and debris and the cold iron of the rail track clawed at the soles of her feet. Nausea reared up in her throat but she forced her eyes forward, fixing them at where the water ended, and then on something nearer: Esau, picking its slow way across. She reached out and caught hold of one of the lengths of tubing that piped along its back. It was warm. Esau itself was incredibly warm, she now realized, radiating heat she had never been close enough to feel before. And it moved on without noticing her, pulling her along with it. She let it, relieved to have something grounding her, to keep her from being pulled into the dark.

Scout was at her side, now. His shoes were slung over his shoulder by the laces, and he was staring in a determined fashion at the far bank. “Okay," he said, suddenly. "Okay, yeah, I know about those. About how those things are, sometimes. They ain’t any fun. I get it.”

Silence.

They came up on the other side. Esau had stopped, and she stood still hanging onto it for a second, waiting for the shivers that always seemed to accompany cold water for her to pass. Eventually she had to let go and put her boots back on, though. Scout did the same. Esau waited for them to catch up, and then they were off again.

The air was growing humid, and slightly warmer, as they continued their descent. Pyro saw fewer and fewer artifacts of humankind the deeper they went. And the air did not exactly feel thinner, but with every echoing footstep she could not shake the growing sense of claustrophobia, and wished for the first time in a long time that she still had her mask. If wishes were horses, though. The lighter came out again; she only snapped it about three times before Esau stopped and told her in no uncertain terms to put it away. “There could be gas pockets this deep,” it said as she stared down at it with a mixture of surprise and resentment. “I’d like to not go up in flames.”

So much for that. She put it away, and felt that much smaller. This might have been why she flinched when, a few minutes later, Scout’s voice came again from the dark. “Why d’you do the lighter thing?”

“It’s … it’s a coping mechanism. I don’t know. I don’t like it down here and fire makes me feel better.” And maybe it was the fact that coping mechanism had just been taken from her, or maybe it was just nerves finally spilling out, but no matter what the reason was she said it anyway. “Why are you being so nice to me?”

In the seconds that followed, the air was so still that she wondered if she’d imagined saying it. She sort of hoped maybe she had. But of course she had no such luck, and Scout’s voice sounded foreign when it came again. “Saved my life, didn’t you?”

“Sure, and then I tried killing you again.”

“Except then you went and tried saving it again after that, is what Esau said.” He sighed, a sound like rustling leaves. “I guess it’s … and maybe this is stupid, I don’t know. But I ain’t ever been good at figuring out people. That was Toby, and he, I dunno, most of the time he was pretty on the mark about that stuff, and the whole time he was around it seemed like the only damn thing he ever tried to do was give people a chance.”

The darkness, quite suddenly, felt like a friend, for Pyro was not altogether sure what the expression on her face was, and she wasn’t sure she wanted anyone else to see it. “He gave me a chance,” she said, stiff. “Look how well that turned out.”

“Yeah, well. He gave me a chance, too, a lot of ‘em, and I gave him a lot more reasons not to. I was just about a charity case. I spent my whole life growing up wantin’ to be just like him, and nearly I died without ever getting there. So that’s what I’m trying to do, I guess. Be more like he was.”

Pyro found she had no answer, for this. They walked on in silence. Each step was an exercise in wrestling with herself. Eventually she found the words. They were sour in her mouth, and softer than she had meant to say them. “Was I a charity case, too?”

She stole a glance at Scout, still nearly invisible in the half dark, and caught a reflection of Esau’s light flashing off his eyes as he met her gaze. “I mean,” she went on, abruptly scrambling to fill the silence, “I must have been. There was something wrong with me when I met him, something really wrong, and I never—I never understood why he wanted to talk to me. I must have been. Right?”

Pyro looked at Scout again. Someone much taller was looking back, this time. And he laughed, distantly.

“He really liked you,” he said, quiet. “He talked you up all the time. I didn’t get it, I still don’t, probably I won’t ever. I don't know. I don't think you were. He really liked you.”

Pyro could think of nothing else to say. Ahead of them, Esau marched on in steady silence. She kept her eyes forward for what felt like an eternity, and when they at last strayed back over to Scout, he was himself again.

She came to a decision. Straightening, she slung off her pack and rummaged around into the very bottom for something. She pulled it out, turned it over in her hand, and then held it out to Scout. “Here.”

He took it, nearly dropping it in the dark. The cold and heavy weight left Pyro's hand, and she was left in the darkness and the quiet as he slowly realized what it was. “My pistol?” he said, and Pyro could not help but hear the slightly mystified tone in his voice. “I thought I lost it in the river.”

“You didn’t,” Pyro said, and slung the bag back onto her shoulders. “That’s the only thing I took off of you. It might not even work anymore, I don’t know.” And then, as an afterthought: “And I still don’t have your compass.”


	26. 23: OFF WITH HIS HEAD

* * *

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

The rail track, which had been their constant companion for the last several hours, had stopped. Scout had made a mental note of this, of the exact moment that the metal and wood abruptly dropped off into stone and earth without warning or fanfare. It was there, a steel string out of this labyrinth, and then it was gone.

That had been about forty-five minutes ago. Forty minutes ago, Pyro had started fidgeting obsessively with her lighter again, snapping it open and shut but never lighting it. Scout found himself wondering if she was one of those people who had a hard time being deep underground. His second-eldest brother, Thomas, was like that; the time they all had snuck their way down into the sewers on a dare from a neighboring gang had ended very sharply with Thomas having some kind of anxiety attack. He hoped Pyro wasn’t going to have some kind of anxiety attack, because Scout had a pretty good idea of what might happen if she did.

It was getting cold, colder than it had been above ground, and between this and Pyro’s fussing Scout’s skin was prickling in a nervous, uncomfortable way. He caught her stealing glances at him now and then, the white of her eyes flashing. It probably took him longer than it should have to figure out why, and as it was he didn’t put it together until he realized she was not look at him, but at somewhere just above his head.

The uncomfortable, prickling feeling got worse.

They turned a corner, or sort of a corner, and around them Esau’s light pooled out to reveal the semi-uniform mine walls shifting to craggy stone. The floor became uneven and opened out, giving way to towering rock formations and stalagmites. “Natural caves,” Esau said by way of explanation, before setting off between two twisting pillars on some path apparent only to it. “The base is just beyond. More or less a straight shot from here.”

“Great,” Scout said, craning his neck back to take in the rest of the cavern. It was all echoes and a distant sound of dripping water, oppressive and threatening. “My feet are killing me, let’s take a break, yeah? We ain’t all robots.”

Esau stopped, shifting slightly as if to look back at them. “I don’t think—”

“I’m stopping,” Pyro declared, coming to a standstill. The lighter was still in her hand. “Give us five minutes.”

You could set a watch by Scout’s sense of time, and even the yawning darkness did not do much about that. For nine minutes and eleven seconds, he listened to the caves. There wasn’t much to hear. He could hear breathing, mostly, and a distant dripping sound. Sometimes he thought he heard the sound of running water, sometimes something inside Esau’s chassis would kick up and whirr and then stop.

At nine minutes and twelve seconds, Pyro got up from where she had dropped down against a smooth stone wall, and then they were off again. The silence remained; this was, for once, okay by Scout. He was turning the conversations of the last few days over in his head, nosing through them with more care than any of his teammates might have assumed. There was a lot to go through. There was a lot to reconcile. He wasn’t even sure if it was possible, and he wasn’t sure if he had wanted to know everything he had learned about Pyro in the last few days.

But they were things they knew, now, and he couldn’t really do anything about that.

He was still dwelling on this when a loud, distant boom cracked the air. He froze in his tracks and saw Pyro do the same, listening to its echoes as it faded away. Pyro was the first to speak. “That sounded like an explosion.”

“It was probably a rock slide,” Esau said. “I passed through here several days ago. I probably loosened some stones when I did.”

“So but, uh, there ain’t no chance we’re trapped in here, now?” Scout said at once. “Is there? There ain’t, yeah?”

“No, there are multiple ways in and out of this place. This tunnel was just the closest to our location.”

Esau seemed to think this was the end of the conversation, as it continued back down its determined path. Scout hurried after, and Pyro too. A moment later Pyro said in a halting, not altogether even voice, “Do you think that monster would come down here?”

“Well,” Scout began. No brilliant explanation came to him. “I mean, uh. What’re the odds? Big damn monster like that, wouldn’t even fit down half these tunnels, I bet.”

He waited for her answer. It came a minute later, in the form of a now-familiar snap of metal and a tiny blaze of light. On, once, and held there. The flame caught and held his eye, until he remembered. “Esau said—”

“I know what Esau said.”

“Then what, c’mon, you tryin’ to blow us up?”

“I am _trying_ not to go crazy again,” Pyro said, biting off each syllable. “You know, so I don’t turn into a babbling idiot? Is that okay with you?”

The running water was getting louder, Scout realized; it seemed now to be directly overhead. Perhaps they were passing under the river. “I mean,” he said, “are you gonna? Can you tell? Does havin’ the lighter keep it off?”

“… Sometimes,” Pyro said, all reluctance. “Distractions help, sometimes, fire. Redirection. I don’t know. It’s brain damage, it does what it wants.”

“Didja get that from that stunt with Victor too?”

The lighter died with an angry metallic bark. “No,” said Pyro. “It’s what I got for letting your brother die.”

Scout wet his lips, listening to the water surging somewhere above them, and to Esau’s heavy footsteps ahead of them. They had fallen some ways behind it again, though every so often Pyro would take a few hurried steps to better catch up with it. He hoped it couldn’t hear them as he said, “So—your, uh. Mom, I guess. Adopted mom?”

“What?”

“June.”

“Oh,” Pyro said, and sounded perplexed. “She never adopted me. She got rid of me the minute I was too much trouble to put up with.”

“Okay, well, not your mom, fine. Good, even. She don’t sound like somebody oughta be a mom. Did she really not ever use your name?” Pyro snorted. “That’s—really? Didn’t that ever get at you?”

“That she wouldn’t use my name? I don’t … I don’t think so. Not really. Not back then, anyway.”

“Oh,” Scout said.

She had gotten ahead of him now, catching up with Esau again. The robot’s flashlight splayed over the cavern before them just enough to let him see her turn her face to glance back at him. At some point he had stuffed his hands into his pockets, and now he shrugged, feeling heat in his cheeks and hating himself a little bit for bringing it up. “It’s just, it’s that I had one of my brothers, he did the same thing with me. Didn’t use my name ever. Still doesn’t, I think, I haven’t seen him in … since Toby died, I guess. Just, hey twerp, hey idiot, get lost, dumbass, like that. I dunno, it … I didn’t like it. He didn’t like me. He didn’t like anybody but he really didn’t like me.”

“Why?”

Scout grimaced. “Just, y’know,” he said lamely. “Happens. Not real likable to start with, mostly. And Liam, that’s his name, Liam, he didn’t—he just decided he had it out for me, I guess. Used to be I thought he was just like that, like he couldn’t help it. I guess now I think he just didn’t care enough to try not doing what he did.”

Silence, at first, and he hoped that would be the end of it.

It wasn’t. Of course it wasn’t. “What did he do?” Pyro asked.

 

* * *

 

**AUGUST 4TH, 1950  
** **BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS**

The problem was mostly likely that every single one of the Owens children was so rough-and-tumble. They all got into fights, even Anna, and if they hadn’t been fighting they’d been up to something worse, usually. It was a rare day in their cramped apartment that someone wasn’t black and blue. So of course no one really paid attention when Jeremiah, at all of seven years old, started saying that Liam was picking on him.

“No duh he is, squirt,” Sidney, wise and worldly at thirteen, had said at the first of these announcements. “Seein’ as how you get underfoot all day every day, surprised kickin’ you ain’t a national pastime.”

It was the same no matter who Jeremiah complained to. Roger told him getting roughed over by Liam was an Owens rite-of-passage, whatever that meant. Henry, next-oldest after Liam, told him to man up. Anna just told him that he should try not to piss him off so much, and that Liam was just “like that.” His mother, when petitioned, said she would talk to Liam. Jeremiah could only suspect that this never happened, because if it had Liam would have found him and let him know all about it.

Jeremiah quit telling people. It wasn’t doing him any good.

It was the dog days of summer, and today Liam had thrown a brick at him, because he had told Liam that of course he didn’t want to go to the drugstore with him. Going to the drugstore with Liam was usually an exercise in being made to shoplift, which was something Jeremiah sort of thought he wasn’t supposed to be doing. (He still did on his own, sometimes, but still.)

The brick had missed by a pretty wide margin. Liam, though, was fifteen, and had an arm like a piston. The brick had shattered on the sidewalk next to Jeremiah, and his brother had laughed like a deranged hyena at the way he’d jumped. Another brick had clipped his leg when he turned and ran back into the apartment, followed by a _yeah, you better run, nosebleed!_

It was Tobias that found him an hour later, curled up in the broom closet and nursing his sizable new scrape. “You ain’t a dustpan,” Tobias said a little cautiously, peering down his nose at where Jeremiah was glaring up at him. “What’s up?”

Jeremiah tried and failed to muffle a sniffle. “Nothin’.”

“You’re givin’ me a one-word answer, motormouth, something’s gotta be up.”

“Shut up. Go ’way.”

That should have been the end of it. Instead Tobias had drummed his fingers against the door, looked both ways down the hall, and then wedged himself down next to Jeremiah. Even at nine, Tobias might as well have been a sack of hockey sticks for how well he managed to fold his bony limbs in on himself. “Okay,” he said after he had closed the door and shut them both into the stuffy near-darkness of the closet. “Now you gotta tell me.”

“I don’t hafta tell you anything,” Jeremiah said, and shoved himself closer against the wall. He had decided about a year ago that he didn’t like Tobias. This had been part and parcel with his decision that he didn’t like anyone but his mother, not really, but Tobias in particular grated on something in him. Goody two-shoes and a tattle-tale, sometimes. It was all made worse by the fact that he was the second-youngest, and a depressing act to follow. Jeremiah had already had his fill of teachers telling him _you should try to act more like your brother_ , and he blamed Toby for that, too. “I already gotta share a room with you, s’bad enough, go _away_.”

“Pretend I’m not here.” This time Jeremiah shoved him, hard, against the other wall. “Aw, c’mon,” Tobias said, pushing back. “Trying to be nice is all, okay, J? Can’t I be nice to my only little brother?”

“No.”

“Is it Liam again?”

“… Yeah.”

It was not often you heard Tobias scoff, or be derisive. This was another of his annoying traits. He did now, though. “ _Liam,_ ” he said. “Liam’s a jerk. And a bully. What now?”

“Threw bricks at me.”

“Bully,” Tobias muttered again. “Coward, too, won’t pick on anybody his size. Beat the hell outta me last year and made it look like it was my fault, too. Hey, tell you what, next time he gives you trouble you let me know, okay? Both of us together oughta be a match for him.”

His brother was only a voice in the near-dark, now, and warmth at his side. Jeremiah blinked down at the gap of light under the door. “… Okay,” he said.

 

* * *

 

Jeremiah started giving Liam a wider berth than usual. He also started tagging along with Tobias, instead of Roger and Sidney, when all the kids were turned out of the house into the summer sunshine. This choice, he found out very quickly, had unexpected benefits.

Tobias was apparently friends with just about everybody. That included the soda jerk that ran the nearby pharmacy’s soda fountain, and the spidery old woman who ran the pool hall that had the best pinball machines. One free ice cream and about a dozen pinball games later—and with only one person telling him off for causing a ruckus all day—Jeremiah was starting to think maybe Tobias was on to something.

He stayed on his heels all week, trying his hardest to figure out how Toby was making everyone like him. Hh never really did put his finger on it, but he found out some other things about his brother. The main one was that Tobias didn’t treat him like a pest, and that he was a hell of a lot of fun to do things with, and maybe that he was less of a goody-goody than he’d thought. Tobias showed him all kinds of things, from how to skip rocks off the muddy pond near the baseball diamond to how to sneak into the drive-in theater without getting caught. He seemed enthused that he’d won Jeremiah over, was what it felt like. He even let Jeremiah borrow his prized hockey stick for a game of street hockey with the girls downstairs, once.

Nearly a week after Tobias had budged his way into the closet with Jeremiah, he jostled him awake at midnight to pull him out to an abandoned building, lousy with shattered windows and DO NOT ENTER signs. He said this was for “initiation,” which turned out to be vandalism. Some rocks, broken windows, and fireworks bought off an older boy who had snuck them in from Rhode Island last month, Tobias clapped his grinning younger brother on the shoulder and said, “Now you’re _really_ an Owens.”

It felt good. Their older brothers—barring Liam, who was thankfully absent—had laughed and slapped him on the back when they were told, ruffling his hair, punching his arm good-naturedly. Roger even gave him his soda.

Jeremiah began to think maybe his family wasn’t so bad after all.

Their apartment was on the fifth floor, and his and Toby’s room had the distinguished feature of being attached to the fire escape. Tobias had already begun monetizing this. By now he had accumulated a hoard of gum and comics and baseball cards, tolls from any brother who wanted to sneak out without their mother knowing, or who wanted to sneak in a girl. Girl-related transactions cost extra. It was a good racket, especially given that shortly after Jeremiah’s initiation Tobias decreed it was only fair that the tolls be split fifty-fifty, since it was Jeremiah’s room too. This joint business venture was sealed with them sitting out on the fire escape one muggy afternoon, eating their way through the caramel cremes and taffy that were threatening to melt in the shoebox they were kept in.

“Wanna see a trick?” Tobias said, around a mouthful of gummy bears, and of course Jeremiah did. He shifted his legs out from under him and started pulling the lace from one of his shoes. He tied the ends together, tugged on it to prove it was snug, and then pulled it against his throat, a thumb in either end of the loop. He gave a melodramatic gurgle, as if being strangled, and then with a hard jerk of his elbows he pulled the shoelace right through his neck. He produced the still-tied shoelace as Jeremiah gawped as his brother grinned, rubbing at his uninjured throat. “How’s that for magic?”

“Do it again!”

Tobias laughed and obeyed, again yanking the string through his neck without harm. Dazzled, Jeremiah demanded the shoelace to check it over for some trace of magic, but all he found were dirt stains and fraying threads. The knot was still a knot. “How’d you do that?” he said, squinting at Toby. “I wanna do it, show me.”

“Mmm … okay. But,” Tobias said, taking the shoelace back and giving Jeremiah as serious a look as a nine-year-old could muster, “you can’t tell nobody else, ‘kay? That’s the thing, with magic, if you know how it works it stops bein’ magic and you can’t impress anybody. So it’s gotta be secret.”

“Okay, I won’t, okay.”

“Promise?”

“I promise!”

 

* * *

 

It was a simple trick, in the end. Distraction, and something Tobias called “sleight of hand,” which Jeremiah wasn’t entirely clear on the meaning of. He figured it didn’t really matter what it was called, so long as he could do it. It took him two days of practicing, but he got it down, puffing up with pride when he showed Tobias and earned his well-earned praise.

The next day, he was again out on the fire escape, legs dangling over the side of the platform as he kept on practicing. He couldn’t do the trick as quickly or smoothly as Tobias could, yet, and he wasn’t going to stand for that.

He was so absorbed in it that he barely noticed the metal shaking under him as someone climbed up from below. This was not unusual, and was Tobias’s preferred way of getting home, not to mention the fact that there were at least two more children living on the floors below who got equal use of it. And on the chance that it was another of the Owens kids, then Jeremiah would get to assert his new position as gatekeeper. He ignored the shaking, right up until the shaking stopped, and a shadow fell over him. A prickling kind of voice behind him said, “What’re you doing, brat?”

Jeremiah winced despite himself. He slowly lowered his hands and the shoelace in them, looking over his shoulder at where Liam towered over him. He blocked out the sun. Liam was nearly six feet tall, and probably weighed three times as much as he did, most of it muscle. Liam had last year gotten into a fight that had mangled his left ear and twisted his face in a way that made it look like he was permanently sneering. Liam said, “ _Well_?”

“Nothing,” Jeremiah said, at once defiant despite the cold feeling now raking its way through him. Maybe he would let Liam pass without the toll. Tobias hadn’t said what to do, if Liam wanted to use it. He would understand.

Liam snorted. “What’s with the shoelace?”

“Why d’you care?”

Liam shoved him. It was a hard enough shove that if the guard rails had not been there Jeremiah probably would have fallen. The cold feeling turned icy as he instinctively braced himself on the railing. “’Cause I wanna know,” Liam said.

“It’s just for a magic trick,” Jeremiah mumbled, wishing his heart would stop pounding. “The window’s open, Toby ain’t gonna try charging you—”

“No shit, twerp, Twiggy wouldn’t even try that with me. Show me the trick.”

This, more than anything else Liam had yet demanded, felt like a violation. Of what, Jeremiah was not sure, but it made him grit his teeth. “If I do will you go away?”

“Sure, yeah, whatever, c’mon.”

He said it in the sort of way that made Jeremiah think he was probably lying, but he got to his feet anyway. There was not much choice in the matter. So he produced the shoelace, proved it was securely tied, and did the trick. He did it perfectly, even, well enough that he finished it grinning a little.

Liam looked less impressed. “Cute. I guess. If you’re five. How’d you do it?”

The grin melted as quick as it had come. “I can’t tell you, it’s magic.”

“Magic isn’t real, dumbass, show me what you did.”

“I’m not gonna show you, it’s secret, stupid!”

The backhand came too quickly for him to react to it. He saw motion and then he felt the strike and then his head snapped sideways. His teeth came down on his tongue and he yelped aloud, and Liam grabbed him by the neck.

Boston was the kind of city where the noise never stopped. It just rose and fell. It was a city of sound and confusion, of the roar of motors, of honking horns and shouting, where there were so many people that you just stopped hearing them.

Still, though, you’d like to think the pained shrieks of a seven-year-old boy would catch someone’s attention.

Jeremiah realized he was lying prone, now. He could feel the fire escape tremble under him with every kick Liam drove into him. The metal, hot from the sun, burned viciously against his face and arms as he tried to protect his head, each individual bar scraping at him and promising more damage if he stayed where he was much longer. His eyes stung, his vision was getting fuzzy with tears, but he could just make out the ancient bolts in the brick shake on each impact. He wondered if it might collapse. He found himself hoping it would.

He was thrown sideways, onto his stomach, and yelped as the shoelace still in his hand caught on the platform and ripped at him. Later he would not remember seeing Liam take it from him, or even how it got wrapped around his neck. What he would remember was something very heavy pinning him down, and the world seeming at once both too close and very far away, and not being able to get enough air.

He did not hear the window squeal as it was shoved open. He did not hear the shout, or the pounding of feet. He did not see Tobias lunge forward and bring his prized hockey stick down on Liam’s head.

The weight on Jeremiah’s back lurched to the side, and the shoelace followed before going slack. He gasped and wanted to throw up, coughing, and finally came to his senses enough to look and see Tobias swing the stick down on Liam again, screaming. All Jeremiah could muster was to scramble back upright and press himself against the bricks, gasping still, staring. He had seen fights, he started a lot of them. But mostly that was with kids his own age, and mostly it was just rolling around in the dirt. Tobias hardly looked like Tobias at all anymore, more like some demon: red-faced, teeth bared, knuckles white around the grip tape.

But demon or not, he was still only nine.

Liam caught the stick on the next swing and with an easy motion ripped it out of Tobias’s hands. Tobias faltered, looking first bewildered and then afraid. Then he didn’t look like anything, because Liam got up and smashed the stick against his mouth.

There was blood. Tobias screamed again, but from pain instead of rage, and when he staggered backwards he came within a hair’s breadth of tumbling into the open space the stairs dropped down into. Now he was sobbing, clutching his mouth, eyes fixed on Liam. Liam still had the stick, raised and ready to swing again. Liam was following him.

Jeremiah’s best quality, his brothers had decided recently, was that he was quick. Not just quick for a kid, but _fast_ , and he was. He had to be, if he wanted any chance of keeping up with his older siblings, and if he wanted any chance of not being thrashed in the fights he got into. So, really, when he pushed off from the brick and shot forward to collide into Liam as he passed the stairwell, Liam probably couldn’t have reacted in time even if he had seen him do it. Jeremiah got the satisfaction of the shocked look on his brother’s face for the split second before he vanished down the gap.

More screaming, Liam’s now. It was a bad fall, he hit the stairs and then fell off of them, and there was a crack that was probably Toby’s stick, but might have been a bone. Jeremiah lingered long enough to make sure he wasn’t going to get up right away before running to Tobias’s side.

Tobias had backed himself into the corner, hunched in on himself, his shoulders shaking with audible sobs. He had never seen Tobias crying before, either, but his face was soaked with tears, diluting somewhat the blood pouring from his nose and saturating his hands, which were clapped over his mouth. He lowered them enough to speak, and Jeremiah saw that his jaw was bulging to one side in a way it should not have been, and that more than one of his teeth were suddenly missing. His speech was garbled, broken. “J—J, help—h-hurts—”

Tobias reached out to him with a shaking, bloody hand, and Jeremiah took it without hesitation. “Hold on to me, okay?” Jeremiah croaked, and pulled him back through their window. To safety.

 

* * *

 

“Bastard managed to spin it back on us, though,” Scout said.

He’d gotten very quiet as he told the story. It hadn’t escaped his noticed, though he sort of wished it had. Pyro had not said anything at all the whole while, listening in silence, and for this he was grateful. It was easier if he pretended he was talking to just himself. “Toby’s jaw got broken and his teeth never came back, and I had bruises on my neck for weeks and he still managed to paint it to look like it was all my fault, he told everybody I tried to kill him. They believed him too, I think. I even believed him for a while. Got to be where it was just, you know. Just me and Toby, for a while there. Nobody else wanted much to do with me.” He swallowed and found it hurt, and touched his throat unconsciously. “Mmn. Um. They, they came around eventually, most of them. Liam killed his girlfriend a couple years later and got shipped off to jail and then the army. Toby, though, he never needed convincing. Always had my back, no matter what.”

“That’s why you can’t let him go, isn’t it?” Pyro said, and her voice was more even than it had been, before. “I never … I get it, now, I think.”

Scout shook himself. It was hard, sort of, his head had gone and done something strange as he’d been speaking. He felt outside of himself, and he was having a hard time getting back in. And he hadn’t expected Pyro to say anything. Pyro didn’t do things like that, or that was what he had thought. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I guess it is.”

“I’m sorry. And I’m sorry about your other brother.”

Scout had nothing to say to that. He tried to shake himself again, and this time it seemed to work. “Did, uh. You quit with the lighter thing. Are you okay now?”

He dared to look at her again, and caught her expression in the half-light. It was quiet, somehow, even contemplative. “I’m not sure,” she admitted, pocketing the lighter. “I hope so. But thanks for trying, either way.”


	27. 24: BEWARE THE JABBERWOCK

* * *

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

**OCTOBER, 1971  
** **BENEATH THE CHIPPEWA NATIONAL FOREST**

More than anything Pyro wished she could have told Scout that his story _had_ helped. Sort of it had, while he was telling it. But now he was done, and the distraction was rapidly slipping away.

It was silent and nearly dark again, save Esau’s light, and she was hearing things. Distant rumblings, far-off roaring. A few minutes into it she strode forward purposefully and caught hold of one of Esau’s pipes again, and shunted aside the desperation for light and for something she knew was real.

Neither of the other two had said a damn word about the sounds, not since the first time, and maybe she had made up hearing that, too. She tightened her grip on Esau and kept her eyes on the small pool of light it threw in front of them. Losing herself now, _here_ , was not an option.

“How far now?” she asked Esau, loud enough to drown out the noises in her head.

“Not long,” it said. “Ten minutes, maybe.”

“Great,” Pyro mumbled, and let go of its chassis.

Another twisting passage, and the tunnel opened up into a sort of plateau. Esau switched its flashlight to a broader beam, revealing the gently-rolling cave before them. It was almost unnaturally flat, and as Pyro looked around she could see the pools of black where other tunnels must have opened out into it. It was a veritable hive down here. “There we go,” Esau said, veering right. “It’s just ahead. Watch your step.”

It said this roughly at the same time Pyro heard a long hissing sound. She tried to brace herself against it, to ignore it, and in doing so she happened to look at Scout again and found him held perfectly still, looking off behind them.

She said his name and he did not move. Again, and he shushed her sharply, cupping his hand to one ear. “You been hearin’ that?” he asked her presently, loping to catch up as Esau lumbered on without him. “That, that hiss?”

“I’ve been hearing something,” Pyro said.

“I’d figured it was that water, the river or somethin’, but that—I mean water don’t sound like that, right?”

Pyro glanced around the mostly-black cavern again. The darkness and Esau’s pitiful light weren’t helping her at all, she decided, and in short order she had unholstered her axe and begun wrapping one of her stolen long-sleeve shirts around its head. A generous application of lighter fluid and her Zippo later, she had a rather massive torch.

The air around her did not burst into flames, so that was something. In the initial scattered light she caught Scout’s startled expression, and lifted one eyebrow at him, daring him to challenge her. He did not, and more importantly Esau, now its own bubble of light some yards forward, didn’t either. In her hand the heat and the light had their instant effect, and she stood and looked into the flame for a few seconds. When she looked back at Esau her eyes did not adjust to the darkness around it right away. She did not see the shape of the huge black shadow until it shot directly into Esau’s side.

Metal scraping stone pierced her ears, horrible and unnatural and wrenching the air in two, and hot on its heels came that wretched glassy scream, echoing wildly around the cavern. Esau went down, leapt up again, was slammed into a standing pillar of stone. Its light bobbed crazily over the thing as it hissed and swiped at it like a cat might paw at a mouse. The shape twisted its head and craned open its huge jaws, and the blazing light of the devil’s remaining red eye bored into her.

“C’mon, c’mon let’s _go_ let’s _move it_ Pyro **_come on!_** ”

Motion, all at once, careening forward. Scout had grabbed her by the arm and began bolting down the black passageway Esau had indicated. Behind them came a deafening series of booms, and for a single insane instant she thought it was fireworks. She risked a backwards glance in time to see the devil lurch sideways and the muzzle-flashes that accompanied gunfire down around where she thought Esau was. Then that scream sounded out again, like the crack of a whip on their heels, and she and Scout tore blindly through the dark.

 

* * *

 

**JUNE, 1955  
** **BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS**

On the evening after Jeremiah had to get stitches for the third time, their electricity was shut off again. Several pointed and loud calculations of what their electric bill was compared to the cost of Jeremiah’s stitches were made, courtesy Sidney, with help from Liam. Prior to this, Jeremiah had only had the stitches: a crooked line of angry red on the palm of his left hand. Now he had the stitches, scraped knuckles, and a black eye.

So he was nursing a collection of new bruises on the fire escape, outside his and Tobias’s bedroom window, long past the point where he should have been asleep. The fire escape was still one of the very few things Jeremiah liked about this apartment. The rest of the place could go up in flames for all he cared, but the fire escape could stay. It probably had ten years on him, maybe more, and it shook when you walked on it and if you cut yourself on it you had to get a tetanus shot. He had always thought it was kind of funny that he still liked it, because these days it seemed like he didn’t like anything or anyone. And he even had a _reason_ not to like the fire escape.

He wasn’t thinking about that, though, when the window scraped open and Tobias climbed out beside him. He wasn’t thinking about much of anything, absently fussing with the stitches on his hand. “Go ’way,” was all he said.

“S’my fire escape too,” Tobias shot back, settling down next to him. “Anyway it’s pitch black in there and I ain’t sleepy, at least out here we got some light.”

“I don’t wanna friggin’ hear about the electric, okay, I already—”

“Easy, man, okay, take it easy. I wasn’t gonna. This stuff happens.”

Jeremiah growled, but let it drop.

For a little while they just stayed like that, sitting on the fire escape that now seemed much smaller than it had a few years ago, watching the city go about its night. Five stories down a raccoon was digging through the trash, and occasionally someone would pass by the drawn window-shade on the building opposite them, a shadow-puppet. Jeremiah exhaled, dragging his uninjured hand through his hair. “I hate stitches.”

“They ain’t real fun,” Tobias agreed. “I toldja not to wiggle the knife like that.”

“If you’d’a kept your stupid pocket knife _sharp_ I wouldn’t’a had to,” Jeremiah snapped. “Freakin‘, ‘course I’d go end up slashin’ myself with you carryin’ a butter knife around, what’s the point?”

“‘Cause I ain’t ever had no problems with it since I don’t go tryin’ to force it through duct tape. It’s your own damn fault you got so mad, don’t take you actin’ like a dumbass on me.” Jeremiah grunted. “And anyway,” Tobias carried on, fishing out a cigarette and that fancy lighter of his from his pocket, “you shouldn’t ought’a’ve been opening the fireworks anyway. Chaz’ll rip me a new one if he thinks I been skimming off the top. Not to mention how damn fast I had to talk to make Ma not suspect nothin’.”

“Then maybe you oughta find somethin’ to sell that ain’t _illegal_ ,” Jeremiah said. “Too good for a paper route, priss.”

“Fireworks are cool, fireworks get the ladies. Illegal fireworks get even _more_ ladies,” Tobias answered, taking a drag from his cigarette, no longer annoyed. Water off a duck’s back. Jeremiah hated him a little bit, hated the way he could just … stop feeling something he didn’t want to feel. “I am tellin’ you, Allison has the hots for me.”

“Yeah, maybe because she can’t get no one else.”

“Aw, lay off, she looks fine.”

“Whatever,” Jeremiah said, rolling his eyes. “Fine. Yeah. Fireworks. Think you’ll sell as many as last year?”

“More, man!” Tobias said, grinning. You couldn’t see the gaps in his smile in the dark, not really. Small favors. “I know what I’m doin’ this year, I ain’t gonna get caught by no cops, not like Benji did, sheesh. Idiot, what, sellin’ ‘em right off Main?“ He snorted, flicking the ash off his cigarette onto the concrete below. ”Dumbass, sellin’ fireworks in broad daylight, ‘course he got caught. Boy, Chaz was mad that day. Nah. I got a bunch of guys on the team already want some, they’re good for keepin’ secrets, so long as no one tells Evans. Snitch.”

“Think you’ll make more money this year too?”

“Yeah, oughta. Chaz jacked up the prices. There’s people what’ll pay pretty good not t’have to drive out to New Hampshire to get these.” He puffed up a bit, grinning. “ _And_ , he told me keep the leftovers ’til New Year’s, so we got that in our future too. Now we just gotta, y’know, figure out what to tell Ma ’bout how we got the money.”

Jeremiah made a face. “All of it, though?” he said, and Tobias’s grin faltered.

“Well, yeah, all of it, c’mon. Don’t be like that.”

“Don’t tell me what t’do,” he muttered, going back to squinting down at his new wound in the darkness. He wondered if it would scar. “We’re doin’ fine, we got enough to eat mostly. I’m sick’a all our cash going to boring stuff.”

Tobias jabbed him in the shoulder. “What, boring stuff like your stitches? Like bein’ able to pay for stitches and electricity at the same time?”

“I told you I don’t wanna hear about it, jackass—”

“—I don’t like it neither, man, but we do what we gotta do. Won’t always be like this.”

“Always has been,” Jeremiah shot back. “I’m sick’a bein’ poor, I’m sick’a not doin’ anything I wanna do and I’m sick’a eight-times hand-me-downs, I get the worst of everything.” He cut a dark look at his brother, who was watching him with obvious frustration, given this was probably the fiftieth time they’d had this conversation. Well, Jeremiah could be frustrated too, he thought as his eyes flicked to the vivid glow of the cigarette as Tobias took another drag off it. “How do you know it won’t always be like this, huh? How much’a what you’ve said’s ever come true?”

 

* * *

 

**OCTOBER, 1971  
** **BENEATH THE CHIPPEWA NATIONAL FOREST**

“This way, c’mon, this way!”

_You don’t know where you’re going,_ Pyro wanted to say, but right now it was all she could do to keep up with Scout. There was a good chance she wouldn’t have been able to say it anyway. The only other thing she could focus on was the sounds of fighting behind her, and how they didn’t seem to be getting any further away. She did not dare look again, afraid of what she might see.

Their saving grace was that there were very few choices to make in their path. She caught glimpses of strange rock formations and scrapes on the steadily narrowing walls as they fled, lit for an instant by the torch. Sometimes the fire would leap in an unexpected way, sometimes she would catch sight of some misshapen thing in the corner of her eye, and her head was pounding. She tried to keep her gaze on Scout and nowhere else. She blinked and all at once the scenery was different, and she couldn’t tell if it was the torch being blown down as they ran or if she had skipped through time again.

The scream came racing down the tunnel after them again, made echoey and omnipresent by the walls, real as anything. She thought she felt the ground shake under her, she thought she heard the pounding of massive hands and feet down after them, and she ran straight into Scout when he stopped dead in front of her.

There was no scuffle, no swearing, just Scout catching himself on a rock while Pyro tried to regain her balance. “What?” she managed to say, pretty sure there was more she ought to be asking but finding none of it.

Scout did not answer. He was staring fiercely at the ground. She tried to find what he was looking at, and noticed they had come to a fork. There, that was the rest of her question. “Which way?”

“I’m tryin‘, okay, I’m—aw, hell, tracks are all scuffed, don’t even know what I’m lookin’ for, bring the light down willya—”

“Hurry up!”

“Shit, I, this way, this way I think—”

Another roar sent them dashing again.

No more talking now, just running, and already Pyro could feel a stitch building in her side. Her makeshift torch was getting harder and harder to keep aloft. She could not hear the sound of gunfire anymore, just their own feet sending thundering reverberations up around them, and growing sound of scraping claws and huge hands slapped to the ground behind.

 

* * *

 

**JUNE, 1955  
** **BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS**

You could never get a quiet moment in Boston, not really. Even in the growing silence between himself and Tobias, Jeremiah could hear snatches of conversation from an open window two floors below, and the not-infrequent sound of another car rolling down the street. There was shouting in the distance now and then, too far away to glean any meaning.

“I was right about the stuff with Mickey,” Tobias said, finally. He use the words like a shield. “Mostly.”

Jeremiah snorted. “Mostly, yeah, okay, big whoop, fat lot’a good that does us. He still hates us.”

“That don’t matter, it ain’t my fault we didn’t know it was s’posed to be a secret. And I was right about the dog, that dog never hurt nobody. And the bike man!”

“An’ you was wrong about the carnival freaks, and about Roger’s teachers bein’ good guys, and you about got us both killed last time in the cemetery. And,” he added right as Tobias was opening his mouth to respond, “just, what do you know anyway, you spend all your damn time around me.”

There was that silence again, stretching out, languid and heavy.

Then, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You damn well know what it means.”

“No, I really don’t!” Tobias said, and there was his temper at last. “You have gotta stop talkin’ this garbage, okay, I am sick of it!”

“Who friggin’ cares what you think!” Jeremiah said. He could feel that old tension prickling through him, gearing up, ready for another fight. “It don’t matter what you think! All that matters, the only damn thing matters is this kind of shit.” He jerked his left hand up, all but shoving the stitches into Tobias’s face. “Getting stitches, startin’ all the worst fights over the dumbest shit, punching the truancy officers, friggin‘—pushin’ my own brothers off shit, tryin’ to murder them—”

He broke off, he could feel the anger rattling all through him, lit up with a dizzying sort of sensation. He let the quiet grow again, and again it fell to Tobias to break it.

“Were you really trying to murder him?”

It was asked softly, more delicately. It was not a rhetorical question. Jeremiah swallowed and wished, not for the first time, that he had kept his stupid mouth shut. “You were there,” he said. “You saw. You remember.”

“I don’t remember anything between him taking the bat and you taking me downstairs.”

“What if … what if I said I was, though?”

“Well,” Tobias said, and hesitated. His cigarette was getting down to the butt, and he turned it over in his hand once before putting it out on his shoe. “I guess I wouldn’t believe you.”

“Yeah, so, maybe that’s your problem right there.”

“J, you were like six. Six-year-olds don’t try killing people. I don’t care what Liam said, Liam is a lying bastard.”

“It’s just,” Jeremiah said, leaning heavy on his knees. “It’s just how I don’t know if that’s what I was trying to do. I don’t want to have been, I mean. But I don’t know, either. What if I was? What’s that say about me? What if you’re wrong?”

 

* * *

 

**OCTOBER, 1971  
** **BENEATH THE CHIPPEWA NATIONAL FOREST**

And ahead of them, impossibly: light.

She was already stripped of her breath, but Pyro would have gasped in relief if she could have. It was a tiny, bluish light, two strings of them at intervals, and two more blurrier ones flashed in the dark beneath them. Scout veered toward them, skidding through what she just barely registered as squat metal frame bolted into the stone, and she followed.

They had scarcely covered a dozen yards when there was a great crash behind them, and this time Pyro could not help but look, her heart in her throat. She turned her head and was met with a single blazing red light, casting a crimson glow on the long, long teeth of the devil as its head and neck stretched out through the metal frame.

It screamed at her, its teeth making a sound like a guillotine as they snapped together, but it stayed where it was. By the time she realized why she was not being torn to pieces Scout had stopped to look, too. “It’s stuck,” she got out, her voice thin and wavering. “It—”

The devil withdrew, hissing, and then shot forward again. Its shoulders connected with the frame and below the harsh smack was the sound of buckling steel. This time it was Pyro who twisted on her heel and bulldozed Scout along, toward the lights.

The reached the first of them, two circles set in the ground itself, and Pyro pulled up short. The earth seemed to drop off into nothingness at their feet, pure black, with the ball of light mirrored within it. “This, this has to be it, it’s a bridge,” Scout was saying. So it was. As she tried to catch her breath Pyro could see the lights illuminating the narrow steel walkway above the water. Beyond that stood the hazy form of a small island, with a single mounted light burning blue on its edge. “Let’s go, let’s go!”

“Wait, but—”

Scout did not stop to hear her, already tearing off down the bridge. Pyro stood frozen on the shore, watching the ripples on the water unveiled by her torch. Then there came another cannon-like boom as the devil threw itself again at the narrow gap, and despite herself she followed.

The echoes of their feet seemed too loud. She forced herself to fix her gaze on the far light, to not think about how deep or cold the water might be, about how narrow the bridge was, scarcely large enough to allow two walking abreast. This had the effect of putting Scout in the middle of her vision, and so when he came to a halt at what would have been the bridge's centerpoint, she noticed immediately. “What’re you,” she said, stopping behind him and the rest of what she was going to say died in her throat. The bridge stopped about six inches from his boots. The island was still fifty feet away.

 

* * *

 

**JUNE, 1955  
** **BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS**

Tobias said, “Well, what if I am wrong?”

Tobias was not supposed to have called his bluff. Jeremiah swallowed. “Then,” he said, slow, “then … then maybe I’m just no good.”

“Okay, well. Let’s say maybe you’re right. What’s ‘good’ mean?”

“What?” Jeremiah said. His brother tilted his head back, just a little, waiting for an answer. He shifted his weight where he sat, trying to ward off the unpleasant, needling sensation on the back of his neck. He thought about going back inside, but found he could not move. There was something to be said for the way Tobias could look at people. He felt exposed. “It means … you know. Doing the right thing, I guess.”

“That’s it?”

“I don’t know, it means don’t be a friggin’ hooligan that breaks windows and gets in fights every day and steals outta the offering plate. Not doing the bad thing.”

Tobias made a contemplative sort of sound, stretching out his long legs to let them hang over the edge of the fire escape. He cracked his knuckles and Jeremiah caught the outline of him looking up at the smoggy sky. “I break windows,” he said. “Stole outta the plate a couple times too. And I broke Rory Wilson’s nose last week, just ’cause he made me mad. I guess I’m no good either. And what was it, I think it was Friday? Friday when you helped Anna get Puzzle off the roof. Seems like a good thing to me.” Jeremiah grimaced as he was nudged in the shoulder. “Right?”

“You know what I meant,” Jeremiah said, but the words felt hollow in his mouth.

“Okay,” Tobias said, “then I got one more question. Is sellin’ fireworks when fireworks are outlawed bad?”

“I mean—but you’re selling them to get money for the rest of us, that doesn’t count. That’s good.”

“Yeah, but what if someone who buys them gets hurt? It’d be my fault they got hurt, right? That wouldn’t be doing the right thing.” He was met with silence, and eventually he gave a soft laugh. “Not so easy, see?”

Jeremiah felt his face wrinkle up as his expression contorted, and wondered what expression it was. “Where are you goin’ with this crap?”

“Aw, hell, I dunno. Just that you got good in you, too, that’s all.”

 

* * *

 

**OCTOBER, 1971  
** **BENEATH THE CHIPPEWA NATIONAL FOREST**

 

** **

 

The next gut-wrenching boom from the struggling devil was joined by the sound of more crumpling metal. Pyro flinched, nearly dropping the torch. In front of her Scout had dropped to one knee, pulling his boots off. “What do we do?” she said. “We can’t—we’re stuck, we’re—”

“We’re swimming it.”

“I can’t swim!”

“Ain’t much choice now, is there?” Pyro felt herself bare her teeth, felt the animal desperation closing in and a wild urge to tackle Scout and drag him to the bottom of the lake with her. “Take your shoes off,” he said, getting up, his own tied by their laces and slung around his neck. “They’re gonna weigh you down.”

“What part of ‘I can’t swim’ are you not getting?” she barked, and felt her own voice cracking. “It doesn’t matter how heavy my shoes are, I’ll drown anyway!”

“Stop it,” he snapped right back, and shoved something against her chest. It was his jacket. “Take this, hold onto it, I’ll pull you across.”

Pyro stared down at it. Somehow it was worse than the other options before her. “No you won’t,” she muttered, stepping backwards, wishing the throbbing in her head would stop. “No you—why would—why would you—”

Behind them, with a final howl and the crumbling roar of rock being torn apart, the devil burst through the passageway. Pyro looked behind her again, the thumping in her temples as loud as the monster. It was standing still, its barrel-chest heaving as rubble tumbled off of it. Something grabbed her by the wrist, and she looked back to find Scout pressing something warm and solid into her hand. She looked at it.

Tobias’s dog tags.

Stunned into silence, she looked from the tags to Scout. In the flickering light of the torch his expression was deathly serious. “I won’t let you drown, okay?” he said. “You won’t drown, I won’t let you drown.” He closed her fingers around them. “I swear I won’t.”

Behind her, there came the gurgling, metallic growl of the devil. Around her, the water broke into wide ripples as it stepped onto the bridge, its huge hands spilling over the edges to break the surface. And in front of her, Scout, his hands still folded over hers and looking at her now with something like desperation.

Pyro swallowed, dropped the torch, and nodded.

By the time the devil reached the end of the bridge she had followed Scout into the icy lake, her hands locked on the jacket and the chain of the tags wrapped around one wrist, being pulled along at a swift and steady pace. She had gone numb, she felt like she was outside of herself. She looked back and watched the devil standing at the bridge’s edge, its single remaining eye burning after them. But it did not follow.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guest art by [@kf-tea!](http://kf-tea.tumblr.com)


	28. ACT III: NOVEMBER

“You understand… It is too far. I cannot carry this body with me. It is too heavy …  
But it will be like an old abandoned shell. There is nothing sad about old shells…”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, “The Little Prince.”


	29. 25: SYSTEM INTEGRITY

* * *

 

 

  
  


 

 

* * *

 

 

The island’s shore was rough and gritty, and the first thing Scout did upon reaching it was cut his hand trying to find a grip. He bit his tongue right after, and then nearly went under the surface when Pyro realized they had reached dry land and started scrambling over him to get to it. She narrowly missed kicking him in the face as she did.

By the time he managed to haul himself ashore, Pyro had already stumbled a few yards ahead. She was on her hands and knees in the dim glow of the single lamp he had seen from the bridge, water cascading off her to the dirt. There was nothing else on the island, he realized as he pulled his shirt off and began to wring it out. They stood on just a broad circle of earth in the middle of the water, roughly the size of a baseball diamond. The only thing of interest was the lamp. “This ain’t where Esau was takin’ us, was it?” he said, and found his voice ragged and breathless. “There’s not—there’s nothing here.”

He got no answer from Pyro, who was frozen where she sat, shivering. He could see her shoulders heaving as the water slowed to a drip to muddy the ground, like he’d often seen her do when someone fished her out of the canals on the bases. More often than not she would be too shocked to move, and would get gunned down quickly enough. Scout had done it a few times himself. He pushed that memory aside with a grimace and instead gave her a last once-over to ensure his brother’s tags were still wrapped around her wrist, and then headed toward the center of the island.

He checked the lamp first and foremost, which was just a steel pole jutting out of the ground with a caged light set on top. It had no other interesting qualities, so he circled the perimeter of the island after inspecting it, straining his eyes for anything of use as he felt the clammy air start to take its toll on his bare skin. The island itself was almost perfectly round, he realized; definitely artificial. It was a comfort that they had managed to run the right way, he supposed, but it wasn’t much help until he could figure out where to go next.

Eventually he wound up at Pyro’s side again. She had sat back on her calves, staring vacantly at her own grit-covered palms. “Hey,” he said, slinging his wet shirt over his shoulder. “You still with me?”

Pyro shook herself, blinking hard. She closed and opened her hands, and looked up. Upon catching sight of Scout, some expression he couldn’t quite read passed over her face. “I’m wet.”

“Welcome to the club.”

“I don’t like it,” she muttered, looking back down at her soggy clothes. Before Scout could say anything else she had shrugged out of her jacket and started pulling her shirt off, presumably to wring it out. Scout turned his back before she fully managed. “Where’s—” She broke off, coughing, cleared her throat, and tried again. “We went under the ground. Right? Where’s the robot?”

“I dunno,” Scout said, suddenly wary. There was something off in the cadence of her voice, troublingly familiar. “Catching up, I hope. You okay?”

“I’m wet,” she said again. “I’m wet and there was that monster.”

“Yeah, uh, sure was. Listen, you ain’t gone crazy again, yeah? Do you remember what happened?”

“Yes,” she said absently. He heard the sound of water hitting the ground. “We went under the ground with the robot and a monster chased us.”

“Okay, um, yeah. Yeah. Just, you don’t … you’re kinda talking different,” he said, risking a glance over his shoulder. She had not moved, her soaked shirt still in her hands, with an equally soaked bra keeping her decent. In the faint light the wide swaths of scar tissue that laced her arms was surprisingly visible. “It’s freakin’ me out a little.”

She met his gaze, brow knit and chewing her lip. “Oh,” she said, a little hesitantly. “I guess the other Pyro is gone again.”

“What? What, you mean the RED Pyro?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “The other Pyro. I don’t know where she is. She goes somewhere and then it’s just me.”

Scout felt his stomach drop. Not now. Not _now_. “And you’re …?”

Surprise overtook her face. It took her a moment to recover, her brow furrowing as she thought. Eventually, she seemed to decide on something, and said:

“I’m Alice.”

 

* * *

 

Across from her, looking at her from over his shoulder, Scout did not seem to know what to make of her. Alice was used to this expression, though it was usually not on Scout. Scout mostly just scowled at her. She had the sort of idea he’d stopped doing that, which was a nice thought, if true. She wasn’t sure, though. Maybe. “Okay,” he exhaled. “You’re Alice. I don’t figure you know how to get Pyro back?”

“No. Umm. I think it was the water. She doesn’t like water. I don’t mind it so much.”

“Great. Cool. Do you remember me, at least?”

“You’re Scout,” she said. “We’re teammates. We were in the woods for a while, with the robot.”

“Yeah. Yeah, you got it. Look, just … just stay there, don’t touch nothing, don’t go down by the water,” Scout said, getting up. “I’m gonna go try and find … you know what, I don’t even know what I’m looking for, but whatever. Just stay there.”

“Okay.”

So Alice did. She wrung out her shirt again and poured the cold, slimy water out of her boots. As she did something swung down and clattered against the sole, something small and metal wrapped around her wrist: it looked like a necklace, and then it looked like the necklace Scout always wore. Upon further examination she decided that it must be Scout’s. It looked very familiar, but in a way that kind of made her feel uneasy, which was a feeling she usually associated with Scout. She would have to give it back to him when he came back, she thought, and pocketed it before going back to scrubbing her hands through her hair to get it as dry as possible. It didn’t help, not really. It left her still shivering and damp. Her bag was wet, too, but upon looking inside she discovered the interior was mostly dry. It mush have been waterproof. Her camera was still there. That was a nice thing. She found the paper bird Red had given her, too, but it didn’t look much like a bird anymore. Just a crumpled sheet of torn green paper. She worried at it a little, trying and failing to put the magic back into it. In the end she just put it back into her bag, trying to piece together what had happened as she pulled her clothes back on.

Alice was coming to the conclusion that her memory was not very useful. Mostly this was due to the fact that there didn’t seem to be much of it, and what was there was hard to find, scattered about like ash from a fire. Most of what she thought was probably useful to know were things that Pyro had done or seen, and a lot of that felt like it existed somewhere out of her reach; she could pull out memories of things Pyro had witnessed, but not put meaning to them for herself, much less what they had meant to Pyro. Pyro was better at knowing about things like feelings and reasons. Alice mostly remembered details, she was finding. Things like how Scout’s hand had been cut up when he came back and talked to her, where it hadn’t been before they went into the mines, or the way the faint glow of the cigarettes Spy had shared with her in the dry river-bed had made his masked face look even stranger as he told Pyro something she hadn’t really wanted to hear. She could remember how many leaves had been floating in the bucket at the well where Pyro had copied the word onto her hand. Alice looked down at her hand again and found a smear of ink, but the action was enough to prompt the memory of Scout telling her what it said. _Kingbird_. She thought about this for a moment, looking for the details around that word, and nodded to herself.

All this said, she thought she had an okay grasp of everything that had led Pyro here. The last little bit was fuzzy, with the running, and the water, but overall it gave her the idea that Pyro had come down here with a purpose. Alice could not discern the purpose. This was discouraging, and she wished Pyro would come back. It had not escaped her that most of the time people wanted Pyro around, not her. She wasn’t thick.

But it was just Alice, now, and she didn’t know where Pyro had gone, nor how to get her back. That was that.

Scout soon came wandering back. He stopped a short ways from her, his hands shoved into his pockets, looking damp and frustrated. “I dunno what in the hell it is I oughta be looking for,” he said, sounding defeated. “Ain’t nothing on this rock.”

“What did we come down here for?” Alice asked. “We came here to do something, right? And then the monster came. It didn’t eat the robot, did it?”

“No. I mean, probably not. We’re here to smash up some computer stuff that makes the other robots work. Esau was taking us to find it.”

“Esau’s the robot?” Scout nodded. “Will it find us? If the monster didn’t eat it?”

“I don’t know, okay?” His voice was laden with frustration. “We’re stuck on this rock and I don’t know where Esau is, I dunno where that monster ran off to neither, and you’ve gone all crazy again, sayin‘, sayin’ you’re Alice, what the hell is that?”

“It’s my name.”

“Yeah, sure,” Scout muttered, sitting down and folding his arms around his knees. “This double personality stuff you do is crazy.”

So much for Scout being nicer to her. “I’m not as crazy as she is sometimes,” Alice countered. “She forgets everything. She gets wrapped up in stuff that isn’t important and forgets stuff that is.”

“You just said you don’t remember why we’re down here.”

“I didn’t either. You sound like her. I said I didn’t know why, not that I forgot. She knows some things and I know other things.”

“What in the hell could you know that she doesn’t?”

Alice thought about it. Her eyes fell on her hand again, with the smeared ink. “I know what kingbird means.”

This, she noted with satisfaction, seemed to stop Scout in his tracks.

 

* * *

 

> Avatar system “3-5a-0” live.  
> Timestamp 1633 28 10 1971.  
> kldreload /vol/kld/aud_vis … loaded.  
> kldreload /vol/kld/speech/jcb … loaded.  
> Loaded routine “respawn.” Re-verifying system integrity …  
> This will take some time.

 

The cavern was as dark as it had always been, for decades and centuries, before the men and the machines had come. Yet now dust floated through the air, stirred up from corners long untouched. Stones and earth were strewn over the ground, against the walls. A pillar of rock lay shattered, untold hundreds of years of erosion blasted apart by gunfire and the blow of a heavy tail.

When Esau’s lights came flickering back on again, the first thing they illuminated was a heap of ash: fallen, burned fabric from Pyro’s torch, and the only trace left of the two mercenaries.

 

> Stopping redundant daemons … done.  
> _, error: return.Errorf: 0x00033204  
> Critical damage detected. Output written to file /vol/kld/logs/110171.  
> Balancing matrix failure. Front-starboard motor system damaged.  
> Reallocating to compensate …

 

Esau levered itself upright, slow and heavy. It lurched hard to one side as soon as it got its feet under it, its balance compliances faltering as broken bits of its body failed under pressure. The machine could not feel pain, but the tentative first steps it took resembled nothing so much as a limp. Pieces of metal crunched and gave way to fall to the ground.

 

> Reallocation complete.  
> Loaded routine "hitbox," scanning ... done.  
> Scanning completed with errors.  
> WARNING! Weapons systems offline!  
> Loaded routine “spycheck,” scanning … done.  
> Scan returned the following positives: 0.

 

It was alone. Its cameras and heat-sensors picked up nothing, save the gouges in the rock where the devil had torn off after the fleeing humans. It had thrown the machine halfway across the room before that. The beam of Esau’s flashlight lingered on the new scars in the earth for a long few seconds.

It shifted its position again, its system struggling to find the optimal way to carry itself. It took another step and something within its damaged left leg dislodged and clattered to the ground. The machine nearly fell, barely catching itself in time.

There was no one there for it to speak to, but it spoke anyway, after regaining its composure. Just a single, word, uttered with a distinctly frustrated inflection.

“Dammit.”

The machine had never cursed before, though it was very aware of the concept and general purpose. It seemed like the most sensible response to its current situation.

“ _Damn_ it,” it said to itself again, and started hobbling down the path the others had taken.

It knew the way, and the way was clear, though the monster’s route through the passage had knocked a number of rocks loose that made its trek that much more difficult. A good twenty-five minutes had passed by the time it reached the natural cavern and its reservoir. It stopped, running its search routine again. Its grainy black-and-white cameras were as good as broken in these conditions, but its thermal register could be relied upon.

It thought about this, as the routine booted and ran, and wondered why the register had not picked up the monster that had attacked them.

Two pings, straight ahead. Directly on the island within the reservoir.

The glowing lights set into the dock on the shore greeted Esau as it crossed to them. They pulsed once as it set foot on the metal.

 

> Signature received.

 

As it made its slow, echoing way across the bridge, the hiss of unseen hydraulics stirred the air. The lake rippled and sloshed as the sunken remainder of the bridge rose up out of the black, water pouring off its edges.

Its audio input spiked. A voice, scratchy and of indeterminate sex. “Is that Esau?”

“Yeah,” said another voice, decidedly male. The machine’s thermography flared again as one of the two living figures on the shore got to their feet. “Esau! Hey!”

“Hello, Scout, Pyro,” Esau said as its feet hit dirt instead of metal. “The monster. Where is it?”

“Dunno,” said Scout, who had trotted up to meet it. “It was here, it chased us, but it wouldn’t follow us into the water. We hadta swim. How’d you make the bridge come up like that? Can you—aw, hell, you maybe better make it go back down again in case that damn devil comes back. Can you do that?”

Esau could do that, and did, as Scout filled it in on the order of events after the devil had thrown it across the cavern and bolted off through the tunnel. “I dunno where it went,” he finished as the bridge disappeared beneath the water again. “I guess it left. That, that was the thing that bit off our teammate’s arm, before we got separated, did you know about that thing? I don’t remember if you said.”

 

> Accessing memory ...

 

“I’ve never seen it before,” Esau said. “You and Pyro have mentioned it, and we came across a footprint that must have belonged to it before we got to Kewaunee. How did Pyro get across the water, anyway? My information says she can’t swim.”

Pyro was still standing where she had been upon Esau’s arrival, watching them, or so Esau thought. It was up in the air whether she had heard it or not. “Yeah, about that,” Scout answered, dropping his own voice. “She can’t, she’s scared of water, I hadta pull her across. But, listen, she—she’s got, she has some kinda thing wrong with her head. She sometimes starts acting like somebody else when stuff gets too much for her.” He stopped for breath, turning his head in his companion’s direction. “Right now she wants to be called Alice.”

“I see,” Esau said after a moment. “I think I knew this, or some of it. Alice?”

“Hi, Esau,” Pyro, or Alice, said. “Are you okay? You’re limping.”

“Just some minor damage,” it told her, as she drew near. “Nothing that can’t be fixed. Scout tells me you’re having some trouble.”

“Not really. That was Pyro. She doesn’t like water so she left.”

“I see. Well, Scout and I are going to go ahead with our plan to find and shut down the core server blocks. We won’t be leaving the same way we came in, so you had better come with us.”

“Okay. How are we going to get there?”

Esau took a few crooked steps toward the light set in the ground. It halted about ten feet in front of it. Its readings told it that Scout had followed, and then Alice, too.

 

> Signature received.  
> Welcome back.

 

“Mind the gap,” Esau said, and the ground began to pull away.

A four-foot section of the ground seemed to first sink down and then pull apart, a deep mechanical hum rattling its microphones. When they stopped they revealed a sloping metal ramp, spiraling into the earth. It was dark, but a faint yellow light could be seen at the first curve. “There we are,” said Esau, stepping carefully onto the ramp. “Come along. We’re almost through.”

 

> Routine “respawn” complete. Result:  
> _, error: return.Errorf: Integrity failure. Repair?


	30. 26: TROJAN HORSE

* * *

 

 

  
  


 

 

* * *

 

 

Alice was not scared of small spaces. They were kind of comforting, in their way, like rabbit-holes. This was good, because the ramp down into the bunker was scarcely wide enough to permit Esau passage, and the ceiling got low enough that Scout was forced to stoop. She didn’t think she liked the way the door in the earth shut up behind them, though. Maybe it wasn’t a rabbit-hole. Maybe it was a giant’s mouth: dark, the jaws closing, and the air warm and humid.

The ramp felt flimsy under her feet, particularly with each rattling step Esau took. Uncovered lightbulbs stuck out from the ceiling at intervals, casting a hazy glow over them. Alice fidgeted with her wet hair, beginning to feel more and more uneasy as they went. It wasn’t the confined space, or the way the sounds echoed, or even the fact that Scout was here. She sort of thought it was something in the air.

In another minute the ramp evened out, giving way to a bare metal floor in a squat, squarish room. Opposite the ramp stood an imposing-looking blast door, about seven feet high and four feet long, with a complicated-looking wheel mechanism set in it. An equally complicated-looking control panel was on the wall beside it. Whatever it was, she didn’t think it was airtight. The bad feeling was definitely in the air, and it was definitely getting worse, and she was pretty sure it was behind that door.

“Here we are,” said Esau. “The heart of the operation. There may be more machines on the other side, but my detection system doesn’t work well this deep underground. I should be able to divert them off of you, and there shouldn’t be more than five or six in the whole bunker, but if either of you has weapons I don’t think having them ready would be remiss.”

“You sure you can call them off?” Scout said, drawing his pistol. Alice said nothing. The bad thing in the air, she realized, was a smell, and it was a smell she knew but couldn’t place. “I only got like two bullets in this thing.”

“Yes. I will warn you that there is one other robot you will not have yet seen within these walls, but I don’t believe it’s a threat. I think it may be some kind of maintenance machine. We may very well not see it at all.”

“Cool, great, rogue robots.” Scout exhaled and shook himself. “Alright. Alright, let’s go.”

The lights set in Esau’s caged face flickered in some unknown pattern. It turned and approached the door, stopping at the wall and its control panel, where six more lights flared to life. It stood there some ten seconds, doing whatever it was doing. Next to her Scout was shifting his weight impatiently. Alice wondered what sort of world lay beyond the door.

And then, with a hydraulic hiss and the grumble of hidden gears, the door began to open. A faint light poured out through the crack, but Alice did not notice this, because with the light came the smell, like a freight train, a hot, heavy wall of something impossibly rancid. It was cloying and rotten, and in an instant she remembered why she knew it. She gagged on the first breath and felt tears come to her eyes, and felt bile rise up in the back of her throat. She grit her teeth, willing it back down. Beside her, Scout tried to say something, and wound up doubled over and retching instead. Something wet splattered the floor. “Scout?” Esau said as it turned. “What’s wrong?”

“The _smell_ ,” Scout said hoarsely, coming back up looking horribly pale and bunching his shirt collar up over his nose. “Oh my _God_ , what is that?”

“There’s someone dead in there,” Alice said, quietly. She tried to peer into the place the door had opened into, but saw nothing but walls and floor. “Someone died.”

“That can’t be right,” Esau said. “There’s nothing organic down here.”

“Yeah, well, there’s _something_ in there,” Scout muttered through his shirt. “Shit, that is, that is just beyond awful. We really gotta go in there?”

“I’m afraid we must,” said Esau, venturing in through the door. “If someone’s died in here I certainly want to know about it. Let’s go.”

Alice followed. So did Scout, after a moment of bracing himself. The hallway before them looked much like the previous room, with metal floors and walls. It had an angled ceiling fitted with more naked bulbs, every twenty feet or so, leaving gaps of shadow between each. To the left the hallway ended prematurely in a plain wall, but to the right it snaked off about thirty feet before taking a sharp turn to the left. There were not really any doors. Instead, at intervals, there were large circles about a foot and a half in diameter. They looked kind of like portholes on a boat, but there was nothing else interesting about them.

It would be inaccurate to say the smell worsened as they walked. It was pretty much as bad as it could possibly get. What it did do was _thicken_. Alice could taste it in her mouth and throat, palpable and clinging, and her eyes would not stop burning. She didn’t like it. She didn’t like much of anything that had been going on, lately. Next to her Scout was periodically coughing and making other unpleasant noises. “Are you sure it’s a dead person?” he asked Alice. "I mean, our job, we’re around a lotta dead people and they ain’t ever smelled like that."

“It’s a person,” Alice said, shaking her head. That smell was not a smell you forgot. “I think they’ve maybe been dead a while. I stayed in this place once and someone died in the stairwell, and the whole place smelled like this after a few days.”

Scout gave her an incredulous look. “And you just—what were you doin’ _there_?”

“I didn’t have anywhere else to stay.”

Scout looked like he was about to say something about that. He stopped, though, when he nearly bumped into Esau’s hindquarters as they rounded a corner. “Hey, what gives?”

Esau did not answer right away. Alice tried to find what had stopped it. It was hard to miss: it was another robot. It was one of those recon models that almost looked like a person. This one looked more like a dead person, though, because it was lying crumpled in a heap on the floor, and its head had been ripped off and lay a few feet away.

“This is troubling,” Esau said after a few seconds. “I don’t know what happened here.”

“You wanna know what’s really troubling?” Scout cut in, and he was staring past Esau now, dead ahead. “All those fuckin’ bloodstains. Holy hell.”

Alice looked. The hallway stretched out another few yards, with a single door set in the left wall, before curving again to the left. A brighter light than the ones before ebbed around the corner, removing any doubt as to what the wide, reddish-brown streaks that smeared or splattered the floor and walls were. It started in the corner, an uneven circle, and extended around the corner and into the light, out of view. “Bloodstains?” Esau said. “Where?”

“You have got to be kidding me, there, in the corner! Right? Pyro, tell me you’re seein’ this.”

“I see it,” Alice said. “That’s a lot of blood.”

“Yeah, look, she’s crazy and she can see it, Esau, what the hell?”

Esau hesitated. Its flashlight clicked on again, pouring over the stains. “My cameras are not very precise,” it started eventually. “They don't pick up color. I mostly work off of a thermal register and radar system. Is it fresh blood?”

Scout swore, taking a slow few paces forward to get a better look. Alice stayed put, her eyes flitting from him, to Esau, to the robot on the floor, and back again. “No, it’s all dry,” Scout said. “I mean, I guess probably it would’a belonged to whoever’s stinking up the place. That is so much blood. Did, maybe that robot there did it?”

“No,” Alice said. Details. No one paid attention to details. “There’s no blood on this one.”

Scout swore to himself and ventured a few steps further, peering around the corner, and then gestured that it was clear. Alice joined him, blinking in the brightening light, with Esau close behind. “So I figure we found where your body is,” Scout said as she came near, pointing to another blast door set in the wall. This one was as intimidating as the first, and made moreso by the way the bloodstains disappeared under it. What must have been handprints marred its face. “Guess it’s in there.”

“That is the door to the server core,” Esau said. “We’ve made it.”

There was a moment of silence; a moment of the two mercenaries looking up at the door, down at the blood. Alice wet her lips, wondering what Pyro would have thought, if she were here. “What do we do now?” she said.

“I open the door,” Esau said, limping over to another control panel identical to the first, set in the wall. “After that, it is a matter of getting you two in there. I can give you instructions on triggering the self-destruct system, but it must be entered from within the core itself. That is why I needed you. The magnetic field would destroy me if I entered.”

“Self-destruct how?” Scout asked.

“The code will start to unravel and corrupt itself. Any machines besides myself that are currently active will shut down, and the bunker will begin to flood. It’s a safeguard, to prevent it from being used by anyone else.”

“Flood?” Alice said. “How do we get out?”

“I’m sure you’re familiar with teleportation technology by this point?” Esau said, as the lights on the control panel flared to life. “There is a teleporter pad further down this hall. Its exit was unfortunately about three days’ walk from where we were, so I elected for the direct route through the mines.”

Scout had begun to chew his lip. “You’re, uh. You’re sure that works, right?”

“The system’s totally online, don’t worry. Alice can’t read, can she? Scout, you’ll have to enter the code.” Esau stepped back two paces as the control panel began to flash and flicker. “And we’re in.”

There was another rumbling sound, and a creak as the hinges started to work. Alice stepped backward, as did Scout, and together they watched the door slowly swing open.

 


	31. 27: RANDOM ACCESS MEMORIES

* * *

 

 

  
  


 

 

* * *

 

 

When the door came to a halt, Alice had to squint to get any idea of what the interior looked like. She did not know what to expect. She was good at machines, and computers were machines, but she didn’t know much else about them apart from that. They seemed a little bit magic, like Esau, because how could a machine talk like a person?

Esau did something on the control panel again, and dim blue lights slowly flickered on overhead. As her eyes adjusted she first noticed that the floor was made of some smooth black substance, over which the bloodstains—if there were any—disappeared.

The rest of the room was a small square, much like the room the ramp had opened out into. There were consoles set into the walls, and screens set into the consoles. It reminded Alice of the rooms with the briefcases, on the bases. A map was pinned to one wall, studded with thumbtacks, and under this was a table covered in scattered paper and small mechanical gadgets. And in the middle of the room—

“There it is,” Esau said, its voice dropping in volume. “That is the machine I mentioned, the maintenance one. I had no idea it could get in here.”

The thing in the center of the room did not hear it. It did not move. It sat motionless atop what almost looked like a reclining chair, albeit a jagged, uncomfortable-looking one. Two huge metal squares inset with six circular lights each rose up behind it, humming gently. Its black head was elongated and animal-like, lacking anything resembling human features, with wires and tubes streaming off the bottom of it. Its arms, sheathed in what looked like black nylon, sat flush to the armrests, any hands it had disappearing into the narrow ports on its station. Its legs were much the same, vanishing at the knees into a single larger port. The core of it was made of the same black nylon, and had a steady rise and fall. Alice found herself staring at the thing, trying to pick out the details in the darkness. There was something about it tugging at the back of her mind, something she couldn’t nail down, or at least not until Scout said it for her, in a low and nervous voice. “That’s not a robot.”

The lights on Esau’s face flickered. “What?”

“That’s not, it’s, Pyro—Alice,” Scout corrected himself with a grimace, “you see it too, right? It’s breathing.” Alice nodded. “So we maybe found out who came outta that fight alive,” he said, checking his pistol again. “Don’t see a body in there, though.”

“I don’t understand this,” Esau said, edging closer to the doorway. “This is going against everything I have on file. Dammit. That could be Grey.”

“What, really? I mean—shit, I guess I ain’t ever seen the guy.”

“Gray? It’s wearing black,” Alice said, but no one seemed to notice. What Esau said seemed to mean something to Scout, anyway; he had stiffened up. “Scout? It’s black. Not gray.”

“Wait a minute,” he told her, and stepped into the room. Nothing happened. The room continued on as if he had not. “Hey,” he called to the person. “Hey, helmet-head, you hear me?”

Nothing.

“I’ve got his vitals, I think,” Esau said behind him. “The magnetism might be interfering. Slow breathing. Bradycardia … I don’t think he’s conscious.”

Slowly, Scout lowered his gun. Alice slipped into the room, taking it as her go-ahead. Inside not much changed, but from here she could see another door. It was just a regular door, not a fancy one like the blast doors. There was a soft yellow light in the gap beneath it, scarcely noticeable. “Okay, well,” Scout said, looking back at Esau. “Guess he ain’t a problem for now. What do I do?”

“I’ll walk you through it. Look for a console that says ‘directive’ …”

Scout got to work. This left Alice with nothing to do, and no one had told her not to do anything. She looked the plain door over again, crossed to it, and opened it. The motion stirred the air up enough that the awful smell hanging over the place seemed to worsen, and she had to stop and brace herself against the door frame for a moment. Doing so gave her opportunity to look over what she had found.

It was not much. The door opened into a narrow space not much bigger than a walk-in closet, and it was simply wallpapered in blueprints. That was interesting, she thought, looking from one to the next. Most of them weren’t of things she recognized, and she could only read the numbers on them. Others were things she knew. She found one that looked like the bomb robot from the Mannworks place, and another that looked like the spider robots. There was even one that looked like a diagram of Esau’s face.

Under these, opposite the door, stood a wooden bench, one of those meant to be stood at rather than sat at. The bench’s surface was a nest of wires and tools, lit up by another naked bulb hanging overhead. Under the bench was a motley assortment of clothes and other utilities, and a moldy apple. Maybe that was what had made the air smell worse, Alice thought, but doubted it. She turned to go back when something silver caught her eye, almost out of sight beneath the bench top. It was a handgun, a pistol like Scout’s. Alice picked it up, turned it over carefully, and put the safety on before putting that in her bag, too.

As she looked up she caught sight of the wall to her left, and realized that under the blueprints it was another door, with a handle jutting out from under the mess of paper. It was narrow, like a broom closet door. Alice peered back over her shoulder at where Scout was scuttling around the server room, following Esau’s instructions. He didn’t need her right now. She crossed the little room in two strides and opened the door.

The closet was dark, and the bulb behind her cast her shadow over its interior. It had bare walls and no shelving, and only one thing sitting on the floor in the middle. Alice stood there for a while, one hand on the knob and the other holding her shirt over her nose, looking down at it. Presently she stepped back out, sticking her head into the server room. “Scout?”

Scout was picking away at the console. In the corner of her eye she could see Esau standing in the doorway, still and silent as ever. “Scout,” she said again, as he pressed one final key on the interface. The screen flashed blue with some letters she could not read on it. “Hey, Scout—”

“I heard you,” he said, turning. “What? We gotta get out of here, it’s gonna flood the place in five minutes.”

“Okay. But I found the body.”

The stopped Scout cold. He stared at her, eyebrows well into the air. This gave her enough time to finish her thought. “Do you know anyone who’s missing a hand?”

 

* * *

 

“This is almost the worst thing I’ve ever seen,” Scout said, deadpan, as he stared down into the shallow closet. “Like, it is _up there._ ”

The body in the closet was very small. Not a child, but it was definitely shorter than Alice had been when it was alive. At some point it might have been wearing a dress shirt, which was now ruined with slime and other wet things. Some of its fingernails had fallen out; Alice had counted three on the floor of the closet next to it. Its face was bloated and discolored, past recognition, and it must have been balding before it was alive, but now much of the hair that had been on its head had fallen out. And you would have thought that the bullet hole torn through the back of its neck was the worst thing about it, festering and leaking fluid as it was, but it wasn’t. The worst thing about it was its back, where the shirt had been ripped in half, and huge portions of skin had been torn from the spine, from the bullet hole to the small of its back. “What’s the worst thing you ever saw?” Alice asked. This was probably the worst thing she had ever seen. She didn’t like it.

“Tell you later. Fuck, this is awful.”

“It only has one hand,” Alice said again, because Scout still hadn’t said anything about that. She pointed at its right arm, which ended in a bloody stump. “I don’t think it was anyone with us before, in the woods. Spy is taller.”

“I mean. Yeah, I figure.” He glanced at her from the corner of his eye, looking her up and down. “Do you, uh. You know Engineer left, yeah?”

“Alaska.”

“Yeah—”

“You hit me with a knife.”

“… Yeah,” Scout said, wincing. “Yeah, I did do that. That ain’t what I mean, though. Engineer left and nobody I talked to had any clue where he went. Everyone figured you knew and you weren’t telling.”

“He wouldn’t tell me. He wanted me to go with him, though. Um.” She bit her lip, thinking. “Spy. Not our Spy, RED Spy, he talked to me in the forest. He said Engineer went to go work for the robots. He said—” Shoot, she could remember this, she _could_ , but it was like pushing through fog. “He said someone made him go get Engineer to work for them. Oh. Oh, Grey is a person, isn’t it?”

“Wait, what? RED’s Spy did?” He stared down at Alice, incredulous. “He’s the one made Engie leave? Shit, does Miss Pauling know?”

“Yeah. He said he told her. He said he had to do it because Grey was gonna kill your mom otherwise, but he told her after Engie left and your mom was safe.”

That was right. She could remember that, burning through her cigarette in the dark while Spy explained his part in the story. She could remember Pyro’s surprise and then a slow, burning anger at Scout’s unwitting involvement at the time. That was silly, Alice thought. Scout wasn’t really to blame if his mother and the RED spy liked each other, or if the robots had decided to use that to their advantage.

Scout hadn’t said anything about this, yet. She glanced back up at him and found his face nothing short of aghast. “Um,” he said, after a long few seconds of saying nothing. “O-oh. I … mmn. Well, uh, I guess … I guess I didn’t know that.” His voice trailed off about halfway through the sentence, petering out, and he looked back down at the body. Doing so seemed to prompt him to follow his previous line of thought. “So, but, what—what I was sayin’ is just, this, this guy kinda looks like Engie,” he said, nudging the corpse with his boot. “And Engie cut one’a his hands off before he left.”

The short bark of a laugh Alice gave was apparently not the right response to this, by the look Scout shot her way. “That’s not Engineer,” she said, flatly.

“It’s maybe Engineer.”

“It _isn’t._ ”

“How in the hell d’you know, Pyro, you don’t even know who _you_ are half the time! Just—ugh.” He threw his hands up in the air. “Look, we can’t do nothin’ for him now, whoever he is. Wasted enough time on this, we gotta go.”

“Scout? Alice?” Esau’s voice rang out from the hall. “Did you find the corpse?”

“Yeah, sure did. Nothin’ we can do, he’s been dead for ages.”

He turned back in time to see Alice pull her camera from her backpack. “What the hell,” he began, as Alice pointed the camera at the desiccated body and pushed the shutter button. A click and a whirr later she had a photo, and she tucked it into her jacket. “Okay, well,” Scout said, “okay, that’s a good idea, but c’mon, we gotta get going.”

“Are we going to leave the other person? They’ll drown.”

At this Scout hesitated. “It’s gotta be Grey. The, the guy who made the robots in the first place.”

“We could still take him with us. He doesn’t look very heavy.” She looked down at the bloated body again, suddenly feeling very convicted. “It wouldn’t be hard. I can carry him, I’m strong. I don’t want him to drown.”

“Pyro …”

“I don’t want anyone to drown,” she said again, more forcefully. “I’ve drowned. My family drowned. I don’t want anyone to drown anymore.”

Scout gave her a defeated look, but did not protest further.


	32. 28: BIOMETRICS

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* * *

 

 

“We have two minutes,” Esau said as they stepped back into the server room. Alice closed the door behind them. “We need to go.”

“Miss Search ’n Rescue wants to bring whoever the hell this is along,” Scout said, edging out of the way as Alice made straight for the station in the room’s center. “So we gotta do that, now, give us a sec.”

“Is that wise?”

“I dunno, try telling her that.”

Alice said nothing, trying to figure out where to begin. There were so many wires. “What do I do?” she asked Scout, and was met with a blank stare. “Esau?” she tried again, looking toward the door. “How do I unhook him?”

“I don’t know,” Esau said. "But you must do it quickly. There isn’t time to be careful. Try taking the helmet off."

That sounded like a start. Alice gave the contraption in front of her another once-over, got a grip on the helmet, and pulled.

It was flush to the head of whoever was wearing it, and it did not want to come off. She had to put more of her back into it than she had anticipated. It took her a solid ten seconds to get it to start to give, and when it finally did, it gave quickly and all at once, with a hissing sound. She nearly fell over when it came off, and the helmet clocked her in the face. As she was rubbing her nose, grimacing, she heard Scout curse, and loudly.

Alice looked over the helmet. She had to squint in the half-dark, to be sure of what she was seeing, and she rubbed at her eyes to make sure she wasn’t imagining it, like she sometimes did. It was still there when she stopped. Satisfied, she dropped the helmet. It hit the ground with a hollow thunk, wobbling away into a corner.

In the chair, a man sat blinking slowly in the dim light. An older man, maybe mid-forties, strong-jawed. He had a gaunt look about him, like once he had been healthier but that health had slipped away, and no hair on his head but a growing scruff of facial hair. Purple circles lay heavy under his blue eyes.

Alice took him by the shoulder. He did not move, so she shook him. “Engineer,” she said, steady. “Engie. Engie, it’s Pyro.”

“Holy _shit_ ,” Scout said again, but Alice scarcely heard him. She had a job to do. She would do it, though Dell Conagher still sat frozen in his seat, unresponsive. First, his arms. She began pulling them free of the station, and a moment later Scout joined in. Together they got his arms free (and indeed his right hand was not a hand but a stump of metal, trailing wires and steel fingers), and Alice held him steady while Scout freed his feet.

He was dead weight the whole while, collapsing to the floor when she finally dragged him from the machine. In the same moment a siren rang out, horribly loud. She heard the trickle and splash of water, and it went from a trickle to a gush, and from a gush to a torrent. A glance out the doorway revealed that one of the round ports she had seen in the walls had opened up, letting the water from the lake pour in.

Dell was skinnier than she remembered him. She could feel his ribs and hip-bone as she drew him upright again, pulling one arm over her shoulder. Opposite her, Scout was rambling. “I can’t freakin’ believe this, hell and damn, thought you were _Grey_ , man, was gonna let you sit here an’ drown—you are not lookin’ real hot, aw, hell …”

“Let’s go,” Alice said. Things suddenly felt very clear to her like a puzzle piece had fallen into place, or like she had just learned some new truth about the world. She hoped it would last. There was an inch of water at her feet. “Esau, we’ve got him, we can go.”

Esau remained where it was, frozen in the doorway. Something looked different about it. “Esau,” she said again, and realized all the lights on its face had gone out. “Esau? Oh, no.”

Scout beat her to the doorway. He hesitated in front of the machine, which was now a four-foot-high obstacle blocking most of the threshold. He said its name, even reached out and rattled the cage over its face. Nothing. “I think—I think it’s gone.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it self-destructed with the rest of it after all.”

All this way with them, Alice thought, looking down at the empty chassis, and it was just gone? But Scout was right. Whatever had made the machine Esau had vanished, leaving behind a metal shell. “We’ll come back,” she told it, and then got back to the business of staying alive.

Scout had vaulted over the chassis, and he turned to take Dell as Alice passed him over to get through herself. Squeezing through she caught sight of the other ports in the walls sitting open, water pouring in alarmingly quickly. It was sloshing at their calves. “Give him back,” she said upon reaching Scout and Dell. “I don’t know where the teleporter is. You’re the fastest. Go find it. I’ll follow.”

“No,” Scout said, “no, c’mon, this’ll be easier if we both do it together. Get his arm, he’s not so heavy, but hurry.”

“Okay.”

It was hard work, rushing through the rising water. It was at least a simple path, a single curving hallway, but at each door they passed they had to stop and wrestle it open to check for the teleporter. She kept looking at Dell every minute or so, always to no change. His eyes were open, barely, and sometimes he would blink, but otherwise gave no impression of understanding what was going on.

Around another corner and this time it was a dead end, five feet in front of them, another wall empty but for a water port dumping liquid into the complex. There was a door to either side. Scout pulled up short and Alice followed suit, the water splashing around their waists, and she watched as he tried the first door. It opened an inch but would not budge further, not even when he hauled back and kicked it. The water rose up another two inches in the time it took him. He gave up and tried the other door instead. The handle turned, and he forced the door open through the water. “This, I think this is it,” he said, and Alice dragged Dell in with her as she followed him.

The room within was covered in blue tiles, and a blue light overhead illuminated it as they entered. There was a small console in one corner, with a chair, which was rapidly being consumed by water. Opposite it stood a rough-looking circular platform, about four inches high and glass-topped. Through the glass Alice could see what looked like an enlarged version of the teleporters she was used to seeing on the job: two long metal arms extending from a sturdy circular base. They were not moving, a fact Scout didn’t seem to notice as he darted up to stand on it. They were supposed to move. The top was supposed to glow blue. Details. “It’s turned off,” Alice said. “I don’t know how to make teleporters work, do you?”

“’Course not,” Scout said, and she could hear the panic in his voice now as he hopped back off and started searching it for something to activate it. “Fuck, _fuck_ we are gonna die down here, we are gonna drown and look like the guy in the closet …”

He had come back now, crossing to the console. There was a prominent gray button on the front, next to a glowing blue panel, and he pressed it. It did something—the screen flared to life. There were words on it. Scout stared at them and swore again, once, loudly, banging his hand on the console. “What’s it say?” Alice asked.

“'Fingerprint identification needed.'”

Okay, Alice thought, trying to focus. The water creeping up her body was making it hard. Focus. Fingerprints. A fingerprint lock. _Biometric_ , something else in her brain supplied. She was surprised to find she knew what it meant. Bi-o-met-tric.

Okay. Okay.

She hauled Dell over to the chair and the console and dropped him in it. Surprisingly, he did not fall off, which was good, because she needed him to be there, so she could throw water in his face. Which she did. Once, twice. Now Scout was there (“Wh, what’re you doing?”) and the water wasn’t working. Okay, Alice decided, and slapped Dell once across the face, hard.

He jolted. He jerked backwards, blinking rapidly. His eyes were out of focus, the pupils different sizes. “What,” he said, groggily, like he hadn’t spoken in a long time, but it was his voice: rough, tinged by his accent. “Don’t, hurts.” Limply he lifted an arm, as if to defend himself, but stopped midway. His eyes met hers. For a few seconds he stared at her, squinting. Then: “Pyro?”

Alice went still. The world seemed to freeze, just for a second, as she realized that this was really, actually him. There was an unfamiliar lump in her throat she had to force down when she answered. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, it’s me.”

“Your hair’s gotten longer.”

An uninvited smile flit across her face before she could stop it, and was gone just as quickly. “Yeah,” she said. “Engie, listen. We need you to turn the teleporter on. We need you to turn it on so we can get out. If we don’t get out, we’ll drown, and we won’t come back. Can you do that?”

At first she could not tell if he understood her. Beside them she could see Scout fidgeting, eyes darting all around as the water rose. She had opened her mouth to repeat herself when Dell lifted his head and looked around. His eyes fell on the console, and he turned to it, his hands finding the keyboard. The screen flickered. Dell studied it for a moment, then reached out to place his left hand flat against the blue rectangle. The screen flickered, then went dark.

There was the sound of rushing water. There was Scout’s increasingly nervous breathing, next to her. And then there was the sound she had heard a hundred times before, the stirring of long metal arms beginning to turn, and the low-level hum of a teleporter coming to life.

Dell stayed where he was, looking down at the console, his mission done. Alice took him by one arm, Scout took him by the other, and together the three of them crossed the water and stepped onto the glowing teleporter.


	33. 29: DOES NOT COMPUTE

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* * *

 

 

The first thing Alice was aware of, when the teleporter spat them back out, was how cool and fresh the air smelled. There was a high wind whistling through the barren trees and dead leaves, and it flushed out the rank smell of the bunker, leaving behind the scent of loam and the crackling aftertaste of ozone that had always accompanied Dell’s machines.

Dell. She looked at her side and found Dell as absent as he had been before, staring listlessly ahead. It was late in the day, and the sun had vanished behind the clouds, high above the towering trees, but it was still clear enough for her to really look at him. He looked worse than he had in the bunker, now in the light. Too pale, bruised in places. Soaked, now, too. Some of the water had teleported along with them, and so the entire platform and surrounding earth was wet.

Beyond Dell stood Scout. He was squinting in the faint light, and it struck her how tired he looked. “We made it,” he said when he noticed her watching him, and his mouth cracked into a grin. His lip was split in two places. “We made it!”

She returned his smile, though it felt a little strange. She wondered what Pyro would have done, or if she would remember any of this. That would be a lot for Scout to have to explain to her, if she didn’t. “Where are we now?” she said, taking a proper look around. They had appeared back in the forest, within a small clearing, on an identical platform to the one in the bunker. The platform looked like it had once been covered in soil and fallen leaves, though much of it had been washed away with their arrival. There was no console in sight, but to their right stood a tiny cabin, and to their left a huge satellite dish sprouted from the ground. “Is this the same forest?”

“I guess I dunno,” Scout said. “I guess that, uh. That Engie’d know that.” He broke off, giving Dell a once-over himself. “He doesn’t look real good, though. Shit. Engineer, man, can you hear me?” He reached out and tapped Dell’s shoulder. This seemed to rouse him at last. He shook himself, and looked up at Scout with something like confusion. Scout met his eyes, only once glancing toward Alice as if at a loss. “D’you … remember me?”

“Of course,” Dell said, but something about the way he said it made Alice’s stomach drop. She couldn’t pinpoint why. “You’re Scout. And Pyro’s … there she is,” he said, looking toward her. “Is everything alright?”

Alice was frozen, staring at him. She couldn’t figure out what was wrong, just that something _was_ wrong, on some very deep level, and it was upsetting. “Scout?” she said after a moment, her voice wavering.

And Scout, at least, seemed to have noticed it too. “Yeah, um,” he said, stepping back to let Dell get his bearings. “We’re fine, we’re okay. I think we oughta be asking you that, though, maybe.”

“Why wouldn’t I be okay?” Dell asked.

Scout grimaced, glancing at Alice. Alice had nothing to give him. “Well … a, a lot of reasons, actually but you’re talkin’ without any accent right now and it’s kind of weird.”

“An accent,” Dell repeated. Scout was right. That was what he was missing, the drawl. He’d had it in the bunker, hadn’t he? Had she imagined it? “I’m not sure what you mean. I don’t have an accent.”

“Okay, see, but you do, you got this Southern accent that’s about as thick as molasses and you say shit like ‘tarnation’ and ‘yeehaw,’” Scout said. “Like, if you’re jerkin’ us around you don’t gotta, it’s really us.”

Dell did not seem to acknowledge this. Instead he had begun to look around, frowning slightly. “I guess we must have gotten to the teleporter,” he said presently. “Did you get whoever was in the helmet out? I can’t seem to remember anything after that. The water must have made me shut down.”

No one answered him. Alice stayed very still, picking at the hem of her jacket, watching. Scout was wearing an increasingly alarmed expression, and he kept looking at her. He wasn’t going to say it, apparently. She licked her lips, suddenly nervous, and asked the question.

“… Esau?”

And Dell said, “Yes?”

 

* * *

 

Ten minutes had gone by. Dell was sitting on the teleporter pad, and almost looked like he was dozing. He hadn’t moved since Scout pulled Alice aside for a hushed conference. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know about how it works when you’re one person but different people.”

“But you _are_ one.”

“That doesn’t mean I know how I work. Sometimes I’m here and sometimes I’m not and I don’t know why.”

Scout made a frustrated noise, running a hand through his hair. “Fine. Fine, okay, I get it. I mean I don’t get it, but—well, what do we do now, though?” he said. “I guess—I guess we gotta get out of the woods either way. Shit. This, this is too weird for me right now. I’m gonna go look in the cabin and see if there’s maybe a phone.” He cast a wary eye over her. “You gotta stay here and watch him. Okay?”

“Okay,” Alice said, reluctantly. It was weird. It was weird because she suddenly _knew_ how people felt when she was around instead of Pyro, and it wasn’t nice. It was uncomfortable and kind of scary. It reminded her of the way Red had looked at her in the forest before all the things had happened. She hadn’t been able to place it, then, and now she could, and she didn’t like it.

But at least she didn’t think she was a robot.

Scout disappeared into the cabin. She stayed where she was, arms folded against the cold, not sure what to do. When she looked up again a few minutes later she found Dell walking toward her. He was limping, favoring his left leg, and it was slow going. Eventually she made herself go to him, so he could stop. “You’re limping,” she said, uncertainly.

“It seems so,” he said, his words still shaped all wrong. “I couldn’t see any surface damage, when I looked at it. It must be sprained.”

“Maybe.”

“I suppose you two were talking about me.”

“Yeah.”

“Is it still Alice that I’m speaking to?”

“Yeah,” Alice said. “Pyro went somewhere else.”

He nodded, looking down at his hands. “You know,” he said, “I think I’m having a delayed reaction to all of this. This isn’t my body.”

“We left it in the bunker,” Alice said. “You wouldn’t wake up and you were too heavy to move.”

“You did what you had to. I still don’t quite understand what’s happened, though.”

“Umm. Scout said … Scout thinks you’re maybe like me.” He glanced at her again, and she struggled to find the words. Dell wasn’t supposed to be this hard to talk to. “I’m here now, but sometimes I’m not here and Pyro is here instead, and we can’t both be here at the same time, really.”

“How did that happen?”

“I’m not … sure. I did something with a dispenser. Something bad. Pyro knows more.”

Dell nodded. She wondered if she was supposed to call him Esau, if she was Alice now. She didn’t really want to. “I don’t know how you got out of the robot, though,” she said. “Or into Engineer.”

“I’d like to know that myself. I was quite sure that machine was who I was, but this,” and he raised his left hand, the flesh one, “is pretty convincing evidence to the contrary. I think I’d be having more trouble adjusting, if that weren’t the case.”

“What’s … what’s the first thing you remember?”

“That’s a good question. I think it was this place, actually,” he said, looking around. “I took this teleporter to the bunker. It’s a bit blurry after that, until I returned to Kewaunee with the medical ray.”

“The what?”

Dell hesitated, his brow furrowing. “Oh. I didn’t tell you about that.” At her stare he spread his hands haplessly. “I left Kewaunee to retrieve it, in the same bunker I took you to—that’s why my chassis changed, to accommodate it. It’s technology similar to the ones your medics use. I don’t understand it myself, and I wasn’t sure if it would work, so I didn’t want to get your hopes up. Or Scout’s. But Scout’s alive, so I think we can assume it worked quite well.”

Alice wet her lips, trying to parse this information. It felt important, very, very important, but just beyond her reach. She tried to freeze the moment in her mind, to save it for later—for Pyro. Maybe Pyro would understand. “Anyway,” Dell carried on, “before that my clearest memory is setting out to find you.”

“Us in the forest?”

“Yes. You, in particular.” He paused. “I felt quite certain you’d help me, if I could only find you. I gave you something, didn’t I? Something to convince you.”

“Y—yeah,” she said, blinking. Something twisted in her head. “Oh, God, yeah. Of … of me and my brother. Yeah.”

The wind had picked up. It blustered over them, pulling her hair into her face and making her cold, wet clothes colder. She shivered, still thinking about what Dell had said. “Yeah,” she said again, shrugging out of her jacket, the sleeves of her t-shirt clinging to the fabric. “You did, too. Convince me.”

The man next to her sighed. “You’re sure I’m this Engineer of yours? Not someone else?”

“Yeah. Yes. Your—his name is Dell, Dell Conagher.”

“Then … I suppose I should get to know who he is. Tell me about him.”

“Well,” Pyro started, slowly. “He’s … he’s a lot of things. He’s smart, he’s patient. I think he believes in people. I mean, I don’t have a lot of friends. That’s just kind of how I am, I guess. But Dell—Dell was my friend.”


	34. 30: OUT OF ORDER

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There was a clock in the cabin, Scout had discovered upon entering it, and it read 5:32. He had stopped and stared at this for a bit, when he’d gotten inside. Had it really been that morning they had left Kewaunee? It felt more like six months.

It became 5:33. Scout shook himself, and looked around.

It was not remotely a large cabin. It was a single room, housing an unmade bed, a very bare-bones kitchen, an icebox, a desk with a chair on either side, and a funny, unpleasant smell. Dozens of papers littered the desk and countertops, scattered haphazardly, some crumpled into balls. A very stale, very moldy sandwich lay forgotten amid them, half-eaten, and despite how disgusting the sandwich itself looked it reminded him that he hadn’t eaten in hours. On a whim he opened the icebox. He regretted this instantly when a foul, rotting smell hit him, and he recoiled, gagging. Well, that was the smell. Inside the icebox sat a rotting human hand, pale and wrinkled. He stared at it until his nose could not take any more, and he shut the door again.

Why on earth had he come in here again, he wondered, leaning against the counter. Why on earth was there a hand in the icebox? Had he imagined it? He had certainly seen enough bizarre things the last week or so. He did not particularly want to open the icebox again. He felt unsteady on his feet, like everything that had happened was finally catching up to him, all at once. Almost dying, almost being eaten, almost drowning.

Scout was not a very reflective person. He was not used to ruminating over much of anything. Yet he stood there in the kitchen for what felt like a very long time, his arms folded protectively across his chest, staring at his filthy, sodden boots. The only sound was the wind outside, now and then rustling the leafless branches, and the steady, inevitable ticking clock. When he looked up again, it read 5:36.

He shook himself, but it did nothing to shrug off the uncanny feeling that was lingering over him. A phone. He’d come in here to look for a phone, to call Miss Pauling’s cellular. He hoped he could remember the number. He hoped she was still alive.

There it was, a black rotary, sitting on the desk. He crossed to it, dropping down to sit on the chair. He did not pick the handset up right away. On the desk there were a trio of folders, each one fairly full, and he picked up the topmost and began to rifle through it. Engineer might have been living here, he reasoned, if it led directly to the bunker. Maybe the folder would tell him something.

A minute or so later, he closed the folder again. It had not been what he was looking for. It had been something else entirely. It had been something he did not feel like he was supposed to be looking at.

The phone. He picked up the handset, checked for a dial tone, and put his finger to the dial.

A full fifteen seconds later he put it back down with a clatter, leaning heavy onto the table with his face in his hands.

5:37, said the clock. 5:38. 5:39. 5:40…

At 5:43, he carefully pushed himself back upright, to his feet, just in time to see Pyro step into the cabin. “Oh,” he said, for lack of anything better to say. “Hey.”

“Hey,” she said, looking around. “Did you find a phone?”

“Oh, uh. Yeah. Yeah, sure did.” He looked back down at it, at where the handset had fallen off the phone when he put it back down, and couldn’t remember it doing that. “I uh. I’ve got Pauling’s number, so we got that going for us.”

“Was she there?”

“Um, I dunno. I haven’t … I ain’t called yet, is the thing.”

While he had been looking at the phone, apparently Pyro had closed the distance between them, stopping at the table’s edge and idly rifling through some of the papers. “Why not?”

“I—aw, hell. I don’t … what’m I supposed to tell her, Pyro? That we met a robot in the woods and made friends with it? Shit, that I made friends with _you_? Who’s gonna believe that one, right?” He didn’t like the way his voice was shifting, getting kind of high, kind of shrill. He couldn’t seem to stop it. “And, just, yeah, we both survived fallin’ off a hundred-foot cliff into a river! We had that fuckin’ monster show up _underground_ , chased us through some caves, because the robot told us to go down there! Oh and by the way, we found Engie, except he don’t think he’s Engie no more, he thinks he’s the robot! _Jesus_ ,” he broke off, and looked away, because he kind of couldn’t stand the surprised way Pyro was looking at him. “God, I don’t even know if she’s alive, what if she don’t pick up? What’ll we do? You—you told me I was dyin’, back there in the town. You told me I was dying and that was it, I was done, game over, and then I just get better for no reason? Shit, why would you even pull me outta the river like you said in the first place? What if none of it’s real, what if I just … what if I’m dying and making things up, right now? How could any of what happened be real?”

Somewhere in the middle of his rambling he had dropped back in his chair, defeated. His legs felt weak. He dared to look Pyro in the face. The surprise had faded away and now she was just studying him. The clock ticked. The wind hummed. Behind her, through the cabin’s open door, he could see the sun starting to come out from behind the clouds. “Hey,” he said, feeling worse than ever. “Hey, say something, will ya? I just—I don’t …. God, did I make you up too?”

Pyro pulled something out of her pocket. It flashed and jingled, catching the light. She looked down at it, once, then reached out and took his hand. The metal was warm and damp as she put it into his palm and closed his fingers around it. “I’m real,” she said, her voice a steady, rough sound in his ears. “You couldn’t have given me these, if I wasn’t. I couldn’t give them back.”

Scout stared at her until she withdrew, and then looked down at his hand. Tobias’s dog tags looked back up at him, as tarnished and damaged as they had always been. The chain tangled up around his fingers as he tightened them around it. “Is this what it’s like for you?” he asked, quietly. “Not knowing what’s real?”

“Yeah,” she said, giving him a tired smile as she sat down across from him. Somehow he knew she was Pyro again. “Pretty much, yeah. It’s hard.”

“How … how did that happen?” he asked, and felt the gravity of his own words. “I mean … I heard some of it, from Medic, after Coldfront. Something you did with a dispenser.”

“Yeah. I don’t remember all of it, myself. I think I was trying to make myself forget about what I did. What I didn’t do, I mean. I should’ve stayed,” she said softly, her eyes on the tags as well. “I think he was already gone, when I got to him. Tobias. But I should’ve stayed.”

“Is that how your face got burned?”

“What, this?” she said, lifting the eyebrow that had not been burned away and brushing the backs of her knuckles against her scarred cheek. “No. No, this was just someone else trying to kill me.” At his bewildered look she gave him a wry smile. “I was down somewhere south because it was getting to be winter, and these two guys thought I’d be easy pickings. I wasn’t. I think I probably killed one of them, and I screwed the other one up pretty bad. But I got mine. I had a big fire going, and he rolled me into it and held me there.”

Pyro paused, looking him over for a moment before looking back out the door, where the sun was just visible through the trees, now. “Should’ve killed me,” she said. “It was already septic by the time someone found me and took me to a hospital. I was there two … maybe three months. The doctor said I wouldn’t last the night. I was in the burn ward and I watched a lot of other people die from it, too. I never understood why I survived.” A sigh ebbed through her. “But I was sick for so long that it did something to me. I started seeing things. When I joined BLU I never took my mask off because I was convinced that my face had never healed over. Pauling wanted me to sign the contract with my name and I couldn’t remember what it was.”

Scout said nothing. He could think of nothing to say. He managed to shake himself, after a few seconds, and looked at the clock again. 5:49. Slowly, he untangled the dog tags from his fingers. Slowly, he reached up and fastened the ends around his neck again. Across the table Pyro exhaled, getting to her feet. “Try to call Pauling,” she said, more briskly than before. “If that doesn’t work, we’ll figure something else out. We’ll get out of this alive.”

“Okay,” he said, and bit his lip. Pyro was at the door of the cabin before he made up his mind, and called after her. “Hey—hey, so, you’re back. It’s you again. How much do you remember?”

She slowed, coming to a halt at the threshold. She had one hand on the frame as she looked back over her shoulder with the sun behind her, half-smiling. “Most of it,” she said. “I think Alice and I are getting to know each other.”

 

 

Then she was gone, out into the forest. Scout let his gaze linger on the empty doorway before he picked up the handset again, and made a decision. He dialed the number into the phone—not Pauling’s number—and as he waited, he opened the folder he had been looking at again to study the first page. Yes, he thought as he shut it again, and tucked it under one arm.

The ringing stopped. The phone picked up.

Scout held his breath.

“Owens residence,” said the voice on the other end of the line. It was a little groggy, but clear enough, and very much alive. “Roger speaking. Hello?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guest art by [@kf-tea.](http://kf-tea.tumblr.com)


	35. EPILOGUE: ALL FOOLS' DAY

* * *

 

 

  
  


 

 

* * *

 

 “I could tell you my adventures—beginning from this morning,” said Alice a little timidly:  
“but it’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”

—Lewis Carroll, “Alice in Wonderland.”

 

* * *

 

 

**NOVEMBER 1ST, 1971  
** **BUILDERS’ LEAGUE UNITED HEADQUARTERS, NEW MEXICO**

 

The robots, Miss Pauling said when she arrived in a jeep with Medic and Heavy early the next morning, had all gone dormant the day before the monster had torn off Clarence’s arm. By the mercs’ story it had happened slowly over the course of the day, like a clock winding down. None of their intelligence could explain what had happened, nor explain what the devil had been. When Pauling and the others made it back (all alive, though Red and Clarence had been given immediate leave), they had bunkered down in anticipation of a trap. None ever came.

Pauling had seemed unsurprised to see Dell, a fact that did not escape Pyro’s notice. Heavy and Medic were appropriately shocked, at least. By Medic’s estimation, Dell was dangerously emaciated and dehydrated, and showing signs of sleep deprivation, despite Dell, or Esau, claiming he felt well enough. Medic had found nothing wrong with his ankle, either.

The Esau bit had thrown Pauling, at least.

Pyro found herself doing most of the talking on the ride back. In a surreal turn of events, her narrative of what had happened was the most reliable, between Scout’s illness and Esau’s … everything. It helped that this time she could grasp Alice’s memories almost as firmly as her own. The only part she had gotten hazy on was near the end, when the water started pouring in, and Scout filled that part in for her. She found the picture Alice had taken of the corpse, too, and Pauling had gone very wide-eyed when she gave it to her. She said she needed to keep it, to run it by a few people. “D’you know who it is?” Scout asked, sleepily, from where he had been half-dozing in the back seat. “I thought it was Engie at first, with the hand, and all.”

“I think,” Miss Pauling said, her eyes still glued to the photo, “and I’m not sure, but I _think_ this is Grey Mann.”

Heavy had nearly crashed the jeep, trying to get a look at the photo after she said that.

The rest of the ride back, and the helicopter ride to New Mexico and BLU’s headquarters after, was uneventful. The remainder of the BLU team met them with shouting and cheers, and more than one sentiment of surprise that they hadn’t killed one another. Any further inquiries along this line were thrown out the window when Dell took his first few limping steps out of the car, though. They had all stared in silence, as he glanced from face to face. Pauling herded them all off to explain the situation before he got mobbed, though Soldier got in a _THE PRISONER OF WAR’S COME HOME!_ edgewise. Medic and Heavy escorted Dell to the sick bay for a more thorough checkup, and Pyro and Scout were left alone.

Pyro watched it all a bit distantly. She had really believed she would never see any of these men again, she realized. The thought scared her a bit, thinking about it now. She was stirred from her reflection when Scout nudged her in the arm. “So, um,” he started, studying the ground. “I guess maybe now ain’t the best time, and all, but I don’t figure I’ll get the nerve to say it later. We’re … that, that was a lot of shit we went through, back there.”

“Yeah,” she said, kind of getting an idea of where this conversation was headed. “Yeah, it was.” She hesitated, the words on the tip of her tongue but getting stuck there. She looked at Scout, and it was strange, now, realizing that all of the suspicion and anger she was used to looking at him with had dissolved like so much sea foam. She thought about the last time she had tried to extend an olive branch, and how it had ended with a butcher knife in her skull. That was then, though. “I wouldn’t have survived on my own, I think,” she said at last. “I’ve always thought I could survive anything by myself, but I don’t think I would have made it, there on the bridge.”

“Oh, um. Yeah. I guess. I guess so. I mean, but, I don’t think I would’a come out of there with Engineer, if it were just me. I wouldn’t’a gone with Esau at all. And, uh. I meant what I said, back there. When you stayed, when we thought I was dying? That, that meant a lot. It—ugh. I ain’t, I ain’t no good at this.” Scout let his breath out in a long, steady hiss, and looked her in the eyes. She waited, listening. “I don’t … know, about if I can forgive you, ever, about Toby. That’s just what it is. But you’re, you’re a lot different than I had figured. You could’ve left me there on my own and nobody anywhere would blame you for doing it, but you didn’t, and that … that makes me think maybe Toby was right, when he decided he liked you.” He paused, and cleared his throat. “So I wanna apologize, for how I was, and for all the shit I did, because it wasn’t none of it fair on you. I’ll, um. I’ll try to do better. Be better. Be … more like Toby. I dunno if that does anything for you, but, just, I’m sorry.”

Pyro watched him a moment longer. She thought she could feel something lifting from her, some intense pressure on her lungs that she had grown used to lessening at last. She remembered, a lifetime ago, telling a boy with missing teeth and a Zippo lighter that sorry didn’t do anything. She had believed the words. She remembered, not even two months past, telling a new teammate the same thing, and believed it then, too.

And yet here she was now, with a sense of relief like nothing else she had ever felt washing over her. All from one word. Life was a funny thing.

“It does a lot, Scout,” she said, and when he offered her a tentative smile she returned it. “Thank you.”

 

* * *

 

Re-entering life as normal felt strange, like new shoes put on for the first time. She ate dinner with the team, sans Dell, and they all grilled both her and Scout on what had happened. It got to be clear to the others very quickly that they really were no longer at one another’s throats, with the way they traded off their narrative: one talking while the other ate. This, Pyro thought to herself with a degree of amusement, seemed to be more unbelievable to the team than the fact that they had been chased by a monster and pulled Dell from the depths of the earth. Scout avoided the topic of the incident in Kewaunee, and Pyro followed his lead. Demo cornered her after supper, confirming her suspicions. “It’s fine as all hell t’see you back, lassie,” Demo said, his smile as warm as ever. “But damn me eye, what sort of magic did you work on Scout? He’s treatin’ you like a person.”

“You probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” she said with a helpless smile. “We … we talked a lot. It was a really weird week.”

Demo had scoffed and ruffled her hair good-naturedly, and that was that.

When she was given the keys to her room—the very same room she had stayed in when Pauling was training her three and a half years ago—Pyro crashed on the bed and slept for a solid twelve hours. Waking was a slow, lazy thing. The first time she glanced at the foot of her bed and saw someone sitting there, she decided it was a dream, or at least a very good reason to go back to sleep, and did so. When she awoke again an hour later, though, it was still there. She only glimpsed it first, closed her eyes, and braced herself. She had locked the door before going to sleep, like she always did. There was only one thing it could be.

And she was right, when she sat up and looked again. Sort of. She was partially right. It _was_ another hallucination. But this time it was not of Tobias. She wondered, looking him over, if Tobias had maybe sent him. Perhaps all dead brothers knew each other.

Her brother looked just as she remembered him. At least, she thought so. In truth the clearest picture she had in her mind of him was the photo Esau had given her, which now sat in a small, waterproof lockbox in her temporary locker. It did not come as much of a surprise that he looked like he had stepped straight out of the frame.

He wasn’t doing much. Just sitting there. He didn’t even seem to notice her, and she sort of wished he would, even if she knew he was just another figment of her damaged imagination. He was so young, she realized with a jolt. He couldn’t have been more than fifteen; she was twice his age now, if not more.

She wished she could remember his name.

It was this thought that galvanized her. She pulled on her clothes and boots in a hurry, pausing for a moment to look at herself in the mirror that still hung in the room. She was there, and if she looked behind her, her brother was there, but in the mirror there was nothing. That was a good sanity check, she thought, and decided she would buy more mirrors for her house.

For now, though, she just hurried out the door and into the sprawling complex that was BLU. She had no idea where to go, and so she just started walking, hopeful that luck would favor her. She needed to find Dell. She needed to talk to Esau.

She wandered past cubicles and through hallways of what seemed to be boardrooms. She passed a vast glass-encased mural depicting various types of gravel. (The name “Gravel Wars” that some of the mercs occasionally used for their spats with RED now made slightly more sense, though she would have liked to have been able to read the captions on the mural.) She accidentally walked into what were apparently some very intense meetings between clusters of representatives, most of whom seemed to be scientists of various backgrounds; closest to her there was a bespectacled man wearing a lab coat with some kind of Greek symbol on the back, and a young Latina woman in an orange jumpsuit. Both were listening silently to a stiff-looking man in an equally stiff-looking suit, holding a briefcase in one hand, and a potato, of all things, in the other. The businessman stopped talking abruptly upon realizing she was there, and stared at her until she slowly backed out of the room again.

She was getting really frustrated now, and more than a little lost. She had been wandering around for the better part of an hour. BLU was a great deal bigger than she would have given it credit for. She had turned around to try and retrace her steps when she saw none other than Scout across the wide hallway. He was not looking at her, though; instead he was speaking with the RED spy.

Pyro hung back, letting stranger after stranger bustle past her, and watched. She thought about what Alice had told Scout there in the bunker, and about what Spy had told her in the woods. It was an odd thing to watch them, just talking, Scout with his hands in his pockets and Spy looking a good deal more magnanimous than she was used to seeing him. At no point did she catch Spy looking her way, but after a few minutes of this, he said something to Scout that made him look up, toward her. Pyro took this as her cue; as she made her way over, Scout turned back to Spy, and outstretched his hand. Spy looked it over for a good few seconds before taking it, but take it he did, and the two shook. By the time she reached them Spy had already begun walking away. “Making friends?” she ventured.

“Well, I mean,” Scout said, “I guess so. Beats havin’ enemies. What’s up?”

“Do you know where Dell is? Uh, Esau. God, that’s weird. I need to talk to him. I got lost looking, and I don’t know where he would be anyway. Have you seen him?”

“Huh, you might gotta wait a while, sorry. Last I heard Miss Pauling was puttin’ him on lockdown while they try to figure out what the hell happened with him. I think you and me maybe aren’t gonna be allowed to leave for a while yet, either …”

Shit. She made an aggravated noise, pushing a particularly long section of hair out of her eyes and behind her ear. “How come?” Scout prompted.

“It’s … that picture, the one he gave me. He said he had more, and I think he meant kind of a lot more. Except Alice didn’t think to ask about that when we were underground—oh, dammit, I bet it’s all still down there. Shit. That’s just my luck.”

But Scout was giving her a strange look. It was nearly ponderous. “Okay, well, wait a minute,” he said. “Come with me.”

He would say no more in the public space of the building, so she followed him. He apparently had the floor plan memorized already—Pyro was unsurprised—because they got back to the mercenaries’ bunks in three minutes flat. “C’mon,” he said, opening the door to his own temporary room. “There was too much happening yesterday, and I didn’t want Miss P to confiscate it or somethin’.”

“Confiscate what?” Pyro said, peering around his room. It was identical to her own, mirror and all, and he was digging through the bottom drawer of the dresser. She heard a shuffle of paper, and Scout withdrew a very familiar white folder, stuffed with pages. There was something stamped on the cover that she could not read. She almost knew what it was before he handed it to her.

“I dunno what all’s in it,” he said as she opened it up and stopped on the first page, frozen. “But I found it in the cabin, back in the woods. When I called Pauling, I mean. I looked a little ways and then figured it weren’t my business, so it might just be a bunch of junk. But, uh, I read enough that I thought you’d want it. And I know you can’t read, really, so if you want I wouldn’t so much mind reading you what it says. If you trust me with it, and all.”

Pyro did not answer at first. Instead she picked up the small, glossy gray photo sitting on the very top. More than anything else she could not stop thinking of looking at herself in the mirror before leaving. The boy in the photograph she was holding, the master copy of the one Esau had given her, much more detailed than her version, looked more like her than she ever would have guessed.

Slowly, the shock wore off. She flipped the photo over, hoping against hope for some clue or explanation. There was nothing there, and she put it back down again, suddenly afraid to look further. “This—in Mannworks,” she started, trying to get her bearings back. "In Mannworks I accidentally found this folder. I think it was this one. There were three, and I only looked at two before Pauling caught me. One of ones I looked at was about me, but it—it wasn’t this one. It didn’t have this photo.”

“There’s more in there,” Scout said. “I saw some, um. Some headstones, in there, that I thought were maybe your parents’, too. It’s all marked TF Industries, too. I guess BLU knew more about you than they felt like tellin’ you.”

Pyro closed the folder, slowly and carefully. The urge to tear through it was both overwhelming and froze her solid. She swallowed. “You read some of it?” she asked. Gingerly, Scout nodded. “That’s fine,” she said absently. “Did it say anything about ‘kingbird’?”

He did not answer right away. Pyro braced herself for more frustration. When Scout did speak, it seemed to have its own gravity, like he had put more thought into his words than usual. “Well,” he started. “It did, actually. Um. Kind of a lot, in a way. But, uh. And, and I was going to tell you, before I found the folder, too. I guess I just didn’t know how.”

“Know how to _what_?”

“How to tell you that I already knew what ‘kingbird’ meant. Means. I don’t think I really got it, about your memory, until you said you didn’t know what it was.”

Now she was staring at him, brow knit, desperately wanting him to get to the point. “I don’t know what a kingbird is. I’ve never heard that word in my life.”

“Okay, but, see, you have, though,” he said with a sheepish grin.

“ _Scout._ ”

“Okay! Okay,” he said, putting his hands up in surrender. “I just wanna do this the right way, is all. Um. Okay. Kingbird … Kingbird is your last name.”

One second passed. Two. And three, and four, and Pyro realized her hands were gripping the folder so hard the paper was cutting into her skin. An accusation jumped to her lips and died there, because in this moment every inch of Scout was pure sincerity. “My last name,” she echoed, and felt very suddenly dizzy. “You—on our first day, in the cafeteria, you—oh my God. You weren’t lying to me when you said you knew my name.”

He laughed, half-hearted. “Yeah. No, I meant it. Tobias loved your name. Said it all the time. I got real sick of it.”

“My—my full name? Did I tell him my full name? Scout? Do you know? I don’t—I can’t remember, I swear, I can’t remember—”

“Easy, easy,” he said, jostling her shoulder. Pyro realized she was shivering. “Yeah. Your name is April. April Kingbird.”

Later, she would not know how long she stood there, numbly staring at him. She did not know how long she spent silently shaping the words with her mouth, syllable by syllable, trying to find the shape of them. Trying to learn them again. _April. Kingbird. April._

It was not that her memories came back like a thunderclap, the way she had remembered Tobias and his name and his life, so long ago. It was more like when she had been at the well in the forest, watching the ripples ebb out beneath dying leaves: stirring up memories she had long since forgotten because she could not complete them.

One by one,

_“April Kingbird,” Tobias repeated back to her as the bus jolted and squeaked under them. He dragged the “R”s out, as if testing them. “I like it. Good name!”_

bit by bit,

_“Kingbird, huh,” June said, looking unimpressed. “Ain’t no Indian name I ever heard of. April and June. I am never gonna hear the end of this one. Fine. You can stay.”_

tiny, fragmented moments

_“It’s okay, April,” her brother said, though his face was drawn and pale and full of fear as he took her by the arm, as water began to gush into the sinking car around them. “It’ll be okay, I promise, but I need you to trust me.”_

that she had not even realized she was missing.

The next thing she was aware of was suddenly being very low to the ground. She had sunk down onto her knees, she realized dimly, and oh, Scout was shaking her and saying her name. No. Not her name. “Pyro? Pyro, come on, aw, God, I really don’t wanna have to explain things if you lose it again …”

Her mouth was dry. It took her a moment to work up the words she wanted. “Scout?” she said, her voice sounding far-away in her own ears. “Scout, what’s your name?”

Her vision was sharpening up again. Her knees hurt a bit from where she had hit them on the ground, but that was fine, because there was this giddy, unreal sensation rising up from within her, covering her, like the ripples had become a flood washing across a droughted plain. She looked at Scout, and he looked confused. “My name’s Jeremiah,” he said. “Jeremiah Owens.”

There was something wrong with her mouth. Something was pulling it apart, splitting it into this wide, wild grin, bordering madness, definitely hysterical. Very carefully, she put the folder down beside her, and reached out with her right hand to take Scout’s. Her grip was like a vise, and Scout’s skin felt as warm as fire.

“Hi, Jeremiah,” she said, beaming at him. She looked insane, that much was certain, and for the first time in a long time she did not care at all. “It’s nice to meet you. My name’s April.”

 

 

**THE END**

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dedicated to:
> 
> the saltiest friends a person could ask for: Noel, Tea, Prelude, and Kiko. This thing never would have gotten finished without you.
> 
> and
> 
> the endlessly supportive people on Tumblr, particularly Ari and Enourmo, and the many, many others who have stuck with me on this long and strange journey.
> 
>  
> 
> _There Is A Season_ will conclude in Part IV: Spring - _Sink or Swim_.  
>  ( _P.S.:_ Want more TIAS? Come check out [my dang masterpost!](http://theoldaeroplane.com/tias)


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